


roll with it

by synecdochic



Series: take these broken wings [6]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Aftermath, Imported, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, spy vs spy - Freeform, tradecraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-28
Updated: 2009-10-27
Packaged: 2018-05-30 17:29:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 45,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6433639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's fucking hard to reintegrate yourself into your life after an undercover mission. It's harder when that life was an undercover mission in the first place.</p><p>Or: What happens after <em>A Howling In The Factory Yard</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/261754.html) 2008-09-28.)
> 
> Epigraph from the Ani DiFranco song: _I think my body is as restless as my mind, and I don't know if I can roll with it this time._
> 
>  
> 
> [Soundtrack available.](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/297587.html)
> 
>  
> 
> The story's technically not finished, and I do hope to come back to it someday, but it's been six years since I've touched it and the last chapter ends on a fairly satisfying note; I've marked it 'finished' and will change the chapter count if/when I add more.

> 
>     _She packed his uniforms and drove him to the base_
>     _She was crying all the way; the world looked her in the face_
>     _and said "roll with it, baby, make it your career,_
>     _keep the home fires burning 'til America is in the clear."_

**\+ 2 hours**

The trick to winning is to make it seem as though you've lost.

R'cher is furious at the report of Nielson's desertion, more furious at the realization that he and his fellow Jaffa failed to protect the other thirty-seven Goa'uld who died to allow Nielson his escape. Ba'al allows the self-recrimination to go on for an entertaining twenty minutes before waving a hand. "It's all right," he says, and R'cher shuts his mouth with a snap. "I won't miss them."

"My lord --"

Ba'al closes his mouth against an irritated bark of _just shut up and think what I tell you to think_. It isn't R'cher's fault that he isn't Nielson, who would have immediately seen through the facts of the situation to the reality lying underneath. "That _will_ be all, Richard," he says instead, picking up a file folder from his desk and pretending great interest in it. "It's nothing you need to concern yourself with. I'll have your new orders by the morning, once I have a chance to consider what our next actions will be."

R'cher's face goes wooden. "My lord," he says, stiffly, and turns on his heels to go. Most likely intending to go down to his basement lair and review all the tapes and reports from the past six months, wondering if there had been some sign of Nielson's treachery that he and his Jaffa had simply missed. Ba'al makes a mental note to think of something for R'cher to do halfway across the galaxy before the man takes it upon himself to launch some form of complicated revenge on his lord's behalf. Wouldn't do for Nielson to think Ba'al isn't upholding his end of the bargain, after all.

Left alone, Ba'al steeples his fingers and rests his chin upon them. Much still to do, much of it cleanup. He has to check to see if Nielson left any stone unturned in his quite-thorough trashing of the company system, reorganize and re-staff the digital penetration team, find someone suitable to take over Athena's role. Has to determine who'll get promoted, who'll get demoted, and who will simply disappear, in the grand new direction Farrow-Marshall will be taking. Has to make arrangements to have another sarcophagus brought in from one of his other systems. (He doesn't use it _regularly_ , but it would be stupid not to have it on hand; he should have expected Nielson would destroy it, and the fact he hadn't makes him wonder what else he'd missed.) 

A thousand tiny details, and he has to keep stopping himself; his hand keeps reaching for the phone, to call Nielson and delegate them. He'd known from the first moment that Nielson wouldn't be staying, but it doesn't stop him from wishing Nielson _had_ , wondering if there was anything he could have said or done to persuade the man to stay. Truly, a lost cause from the start, and he'd known it. Ethics are such a problematic thing in an ally; it means the alliance will forever and always be on the ally's terms. 

He wonders if Nielson ever thought of himself as his ally, or if Nielson had taken so long to say him yea or nay because it had taken him that long to rearrange his internal reality until _cooperation_ didn't mean _alliance_. No way of telling, really, short of taking Nielson as his new host and using the man's mind as he'd used his body. Which would be such a waste; Nielson is far too valuable a tool to use up and carelessly destroy, cast aside and broken the way it would be necessary to break him should Ba'al choose him for a host. He's known that for quite some time.

Besides, he likes this body; after so long, it's become a comfortable friend, a pair of shoes perfectly broken in or a pair of jeans perfectly worn. 

Still, he's given much in the way of concessions in order to win his place as the only one of himself left standing, not in the least being that he is now only one pair of hands instead of thirty-something. It truly is a pity he couldn't persuade Nielson to remain with him; he could have used the help. He has _some_ useful Tau'ri in his employ, but none so useful as Nielson was, with his intelligence and his initiative and his _competence_. Competence is a skill in short supply. 

Ah, well; it can't be helped. He _is_ the superior species; he'll simply have to make do. He has plenty of time to arrange things; it will be decades before Nielson shuffles off this mortal coil and frees him to act again, and with a little bit of planning, he'll be well-poised to put his plan into motion the minute his bargain expires. The extra time will only allow him to prepare more carefully. He has all the time in the world.

Before he begins, he remembers to send his executive assistant out to pick up a postcard of downtown Seattle. When she returns, he scribbles "having a wonderful time, wish you were here" on the back and addresses it to O'Neill's office. He leaves it unsigned. O'Neill will know who sent it, after all.

 

**\+ 4.5 hours**

Spence had spent the last three hours promising himself everything would look much better as soon as he could get _away_ from JD, away from that too-knowing look in that too-young face, and yeah, okay, he'd known it to be a lie even as he'd been telling it to himself but that doesn't make it _suck_ any less when it doesn't.

He's trembling as he strips out of the wreckage of his clothes, and there's a part of him that thinks he's been trembling for a while and just hasn't let himself notice. He feels _cold_ , despite the muggy weather, despite the fact that the motel air conditioner kinda _sucks_ , and he tries like hell not to think about it, because if he thinks about it, he's gonna have to think about all the things that've just happened to him and he'd _really_ like to have a hell of a lot more booze on hand before he faces _that_.

Faces. Ha. _That's a good one,_ whispers the little voice inside his head that always sounds so much like his twin -- people always accuse them of being able to read each other's minds, but really it's just knowing each other well enough to be able to predict what the other one's going to do or say or think, and oh, _God_ , he misses his brother so goddamn _much_ and this all would have been so much fucking easier if Skipper hadn't been in another fucking _galaxy_ , but them's the fucking breaks. He wonders what Skipper's heard about all of this. He'd done what he could to cue Skipper that all was not what it seemed, and he knows Skipper would have understood, but Skipper _has_ to be going bugfuck nuts wondering what the fucking fuck. Just another thing to clean up. 

Oh, God, this is going to take fucking forever. 

( _You don't have to do this, you know,_ General O'Neill had told him, and he'd said _I know_ , and he'd gone and done it anyway. And he's _glad_ he did; JD is _family_ , and he's not thinking about how that means O'Neill is family _too_ , and really, maybe he should just make a list of all the things he's not thinking about _now_ so he can make sure he's not _missing_ any.)

The person who looks back at him from the bathroom mirror doesn't look like someone who just went through ... what he went through. (And maybe someday he'll be ready to think about what all those things _were_ , and that day is not today, and tomorrow isn't looking all that good _either_.) He stares at his face for a long time, trying to reassure himself that he's all right. _See? It doesn't matter what you remember happening, or what you think you remember happening. You're fine now. Everything's fine. It won't be long until this is all just a distant memory._

The pep talk doesn't help, though, and it takes Spence a few minutes to realize why.

When he was six years old, he'd been running up the walkway of Aunt Annabeth and Uncle Stephen's house in South Carolina, in the rain, barefoot, and he'd slipped and fallen. Cracked his forehead against the stone steps out front hard enough to knock him out for a few seconds, or so Skipper, wide-eyed, had assured him. Scalp wounds always bleed like a motherfucker. It had needed four stitches. He's always been grateful that the resulting scar had faded to white and tended to disappear into his hairline unless someone was looking for it.

It isn't there now.

Spence beats back the panic that rises at the sight (no man should be forced to look into the mirror and see a stranger staring back at him, and it doesn't _matter_ that he's used to looking at Skipper, because he and Skipper look nothing alike on any level other than skin-deep) and forces himself to make a methodical inspection. Lower torso, knife fight in a back alley in Berlin that he'd had to do some serious tapdancing to explain to his CO: gone. Left bicep, the remnants of the chicken pox he'd had six times worse than Skipper had: gone. Right knee, where he'd gashed himself open on a rock in the stream behind Ned Hutchinson's house when he was twelve: gone. All of his scars, erased as though they'd never been. 

When his inspection proceeds further, and he realizes that he isn't even fucking _circumsized_ anymore, he has to sit down on the grungy bathroom tile and put his head between his knees and just _shake_.

Knowing intellectually that the sarcophagus functions by restoring your body to the genetic blueprint carried in your DNA is entirely different than seeing the evidence before your own eyes.

The SGC, like any command, has developed its own shorthand and injokes over the years, and Major Benton had warned him, when he'd first arrived, that it would take him a while to understand them. And really, as things go, the people at the SGC have been welcoming enough, but he's spent the last year or so always feeling like there was some kind of distance between him and everyone else, always feeling like he was _missing_ something. Joe Langley from SG-15 had finally filled him in, one night over beer and a pool table: _nobody around here bothers to get too close to anybody new until we're sure they're going to make it past their burn-in._ At the time, Spence had thought it was remarkably callous. Then he'd looked up the actual numbers: seventy percent didn't make it out of a two-year tour. (Crazy or dead or crazy _and_ dead.) 

The casualty rates have dropped like a rock since the defeat of (most of) the last of the System Lords. And all of the old-timers have been _relaxing_ since then, like letting out a deeply-held breath and looking around to see what's going to happen next, but the culture that kind of pressure created won't go away for a long time, if ever. Spence had been wondering if he'd ever have a chance of understanding it. Now, he thinks, a lot of things are suddenly going to start making a hell of a lot more sense.

One of the research assistants in Xenoanthropology  & Linguistics -- scuttlebutt has it that he's not from _around here_ , nudge nudge wink wink -- produces and distributes a monthly base-gossip newsletter. Supposed to be underground, but everyone knows who's behind it anyway. Spence has seen the back issues. Every year, there's an unofficial awards ceremony, recognizing all of the crazy and stupid things people have done that year. The award that nobody had ever been willing to explain to Spence, the award everyone got tight-lipped and evasive about, was the "Order of the Golden Coffin". At the time, he'd decided it was given out for the most death-defying stunt. Now he's starting to think it's for something else entirely.

Base gossip had told him about Daniel Jackson, dying and being reborn. He'd thought it had been a _joke_. Everybody always tries to confuse the new guy with as many outrageous stories as possible, and he's always made it a point of not falling for the practical jokes, and oh, God, what if none of it was a joke after all.

For a minute, Spence wants to go next door, knock on JD's door and demand... something. Answers. Reassurance. Hell, just a goddamn shoulder to cry on. If it had been two months ago, he might have, but two months ago he wouldn't have needed it, and two months ago he hadn't known who JD _is_.

Was. Is. Because he'd known JD was older than he looks (and being told that had explained _so goddamn much_ and he doesn't know how JD and Uncle Cam can keep it secret, except of course he does, because everybody in this family understands _classified_ and that's so classified Spence hasn't ever even heard a _breath_ of gossip about it under the Mountain), but there's "older than he looks" and then there's _holy fuck my cousin is sleeping with Batshit Jack O'Neill_. And Spence hadn't missed the way JD had clammed up and refused to talk about it, and he wishes there was some way of saying _your secret's safe with me_ that wouldn't also remind JD that Spence knows what his secret _is_ , and tomorrow or the next day or the day after that JD is going to put him on a plane back to DC and Spence is going to have to look General Jack O'Neill in the face and try not to _let on that he knows_. Even if he isn't sure _what_ he knows. Even if he never will be.

It's cold in here. _He's_ cold. Like his own personal thermostat is broken, and he can't help but wonder what _else_ is broken, wonder when the world will stop feeling so bright and loud and overexposed with his skin itching like there's spiders underneath it and --

_C'mon, Spence, can't lie down yet. You still got shit to do._ It's amazing how much his inner pep talk sounds like Skipper. Skipper, the one who's always out front and center, dealing with people so Spence has time to plot and plan, the one who's always brash and bright and cheerful, the one who runs interference with everyone around them so Spence doesn't have to. Skipper's always the one on stage, and Spence is always the one behind him, and _dammit, he fucking misses his brother_.

He wishes he could call his father and hear him offer reassurance, but the way things stand now, he'd probably get hung up on. And oh, God, that hurts _too_ , for all that General O'Neill had promised he'd take care of getting him right with his family afterwards, because the fact that his family was willing to _believe_ he'd do something that was worthy of court-martial, the fact that his family would _believe_ he'd have that little honor --

Yeah, add another thing to the list of things he's not thinking about. 

Eventually, he realizes that he's shivering, sitting on the floor of the bathroom, half-jammed in between the toilet and the tub. He doesn't know how long he's been there, or even what time it is. All he knows is that he's cold, and he's tired, and he's hungry, and he feels like he's been hit in the face (don't think about your fucking _face_ , Spencer) and then hung out to dry. 

Shock, he supposes. Wouldn't be the first time. Probably won't be the last.

The pipes of the shower hiss and bang as he turns the faucet. He's covered in ... things he isn't thinking about. Needs to shower clean before he can stare at the door of the motel room and wonder whether or not he can bear to leave this room in search of food. (No. He doesn't have a choice; he can't let _that fucking snake_ win now, or else all of this will be for nothing, and the longer he puts it off, lets it build up inside his head, the worse it'll be. There's a McDonald's across the street. It's close enough to food. He can do this. He _can_.) 

Then he can sleep. If he's lucky, the shock won't have worn off before then. If he's _really_ lucky, he'll make it through at least one night before the dreams start waking him.

 

**\+ 6 hours**

Sam's just sitting down to a late dinner (frozen pizza is still better than the stuff they serve in the cafeteria on base and _claim_ is food) when her cell phone rings. It's Jack's ringtone ("Somewhere Over The Rainbow", and she always has to remind herself to change it before they're going to be in the same vicinity, because otherwise he'd _kill her_ ), so she takes a bite of the pizza before she flips it open, because Jack wasn't scheduled to call her today and that's usually a bad sign; if he's calling to give her orders, one bite of pizza might be all she'll get.

"Hang on a second," she says, mouth full. She looks around, trying to remember where she left her jammer, trying to remember if she'd left it turned on or not. She finds it (shoved into her silverware drawer, and yes, on) just as she's finished the bite of pizza. "Okay, back."

Jack sounds tired. _Really_ tired, and it isn't just the kind of tired that comes from being two hours ahead of her. "You sitting down?" he asks.

Her mouth goes dry, because that can't be good. "Yeah," she says, doing so. "Is everyone --"

"Yeah, mostly," he says. "Kid called me a little while ago. Everyone's still alive, at least. Look, how fast can you get your stuff packed up? I need you out here. For at _least_ a few months, probably more."

A thousand questions spring to mind -- chief among them being _what the hell happened_ \-- but for all that they're still trying to figure out this weird _thing_ they seem to be trying to build in their personal life, Jack is going to be able to command her _professionally_ for the rest of her life. So she shoves all the questions aside; she can ask them later. He doesn't sound like he's in the mood to dispense any answers right now, either, and she's proud, she's so goddamn _proud_ of the fact that after ten years, she's finally learning when she can push him and when it's better for them both if she just backs off. 

So instead she just says, "It depends on how secret you need me to be about things. If I can have someone clear up the loose ends for me, I can be out the door in fifteen minutes, tops. If you need me to just disappear without letting anyone know, it'll take me longer."

"Cat's out of the bag now," Jack says. "Need you out here for the task force. Kid says there are no actual _snakes_ in town, just humans who do what the snake tells them to do, but he's not actually _positive_ , so we're going to have to check. And the President wants us to check _quietly_ , which means no MRIs." He sighs, and she can hear something in his voice that she can't identify. "And I've got a list of things longer than my arm to do, and they all need to be done _right now_ , and I need you. I can send you back this weekend to prep for a longer stay, but the quicker you can get here, the better."

She winces. That _can't_ be good. "Okay," she says, cramming another bite of pizza into her mouth and talking around it, taking the phone with her into her bedroom. She keeps a go-bag packed -- they all do; Jack's old lessons, all the things he drilled into them over the years -- so she doesn't even have to scramble to pull her things together. "I can be back over to base in about, oh, give me an hour, hour and a half. Traffic shouldn't be too bad, but I'll need to --"

"Don't worry about it," Jack says. "Just grab your shit and tell me when you're ready. I've got _Odyssey_ on standby to bounce you. We can overnight your keys back to somebody --" 

He must _really_ need her if he's calling in favors; the use of _Odyssey_ as a transport relay is frowned upon, but Sam's work with the fleet development program is enough of a reason for her to have had the transporter lock beacon implanted, and she's one of the few people she knows who doesn't get transport-sick. "It's okay," she interrupts. "Sergeant Muñerez is my in-case-of. She's no Walter, but I can give her a call from the office tomorrow; she'll know what to do." Laptop, shoes, and she's glad she didn't change when she got home; she's still in BDUs, which will have to do. Her go-bag has a service dress uniform in it, but she takes a second to grab another, if she's going to be at the Pentagon for a while -- oh, there are a hundred things she _should_ be bringing with her, but she can have Alicia overnight her anything critical. Her years on SG-1 taught her to make sure that she always has a backup who can go over and water her plants and clean out her fridge if she happens to get stuck somewhere for longer than she'd been expecting to. 

She'd thought it was paranoia when she'd set things up like that at Area 51. The worst she gets called away for is a few days in orbit on whatever ship has limped in. Now she's glad she never lost the habit.

On the other end of the phone, Jack sighs a sigh of relief. "Thanks," he says. "I hope you're ready to be up all night. We have to move fast. Dunno if the snake's relying on _zatarc_ programming, but we want as many people as possible in custody by morning. Lemme know when you're ready."

Sam hefts her go-bag up one shoulder, her laptop bag up the other shoulder, and shoves her feet into her shoes. Back to the kitchen. Rest of the pizza goes down the garbage disposal, so it won't rot in the trash. She takes a look around her, with the weather eye of eight years of practice in returning to a house that was abandoned unexpectedly. It's surprising how few things stand out as being a potential problem. She's been off the line for two years now, and yet she still keeps her house ready to be put on pause at a moment's notice.

"Okay," she says, into the phone. "Tell 'em go."

She flips the phone shut just before the room around her goes white with the sparkle of dematerialization. High Earth Orbit is a little bit out of Verizon's range.

 

**\+ 6.5 hours**

It's still muggy outside, even though the sun's finally set, but Spence doesn't notice; he's got two shirts and a hoodie on, and if he had a heavier jacket, he'd wear it no matter how much it would attract attention. He's _freezing_. There's a part of him that worries about it, except he knows the biology behind what's happening. Part of the SGC orientation, and JD had mentioned it again. The sarcophagus uses the body's own resources to heal you. He'll be tired, cold, and hungry for a while. There's nothing wrong with him. Nothing that time won't fix.

Nothing that can't be fixed.

He shoves his hands in the pockets of his hoodie and dashes across the state highway from the motel to the McDonald's. Everything around him seems too loud, too sharp, too fast. He feels like he's moving slowly, sluggishly, but when he's halfway across the four lanes of the westbound side and a car speeds up instead of slowing down, he finds he's on the shoulder without even consciously thinking about ducking out of the way. The driver leans on the horn and flips him off. Maybe he shouldn't have worn the black hoodie.

There's a line at the counter of the McDonald's, and he steps up to the back of it. The person in front of him hasn't showered in a few days; he smells like stale sweat and a little bit like urine. Spence's nose wrinkles, and he tries to figure out why the other people around the guy aren't giving him a wide berth. Maybe he's the only one who can smell it. Maybe the _thing_ did something to his senses. Maybe this is the way he's going to perceive the world from now on.

( _Shock_ , his brain tells him. _Shock. Nothing more._ )

His stomach flips as he gets up to the counter, and he ignores it as much as he can. (It's the smell of grease that does it.) He orders a plain Quarter Pounder and fries, and then, obeying some small siren of biology in the back of his head, asks for another two burgers and an extra large fry as well. When he gets the food, something wakes up in the pit of his stomach, something rapacious and demanding, and he stands on the sidewalk outside and bolts down a burger in three bites. It nearly makes him gag, but he sets his jaw and keeps going anyway. The fries taste better. Maybe it's the salt.

He's not going to stand here and eat a couple thousand calories standing in the parking lot of a fucking McDonald's, though, so he darts back across the highway, takeout bag in hand. His mouth is watering, but he's not sure if it's a sign of hunger or a sign of nausea. 

Just as he's unlocking the door to his room, fumbling to get the reader to recognize his keycard, the door of the room next to him opens, and JD steps out, wearing fresh clothes of his own and carrying one of the bags he'd bought at the Target.

Seems startled to see him, more startled to see the white paper bag in his hand. "Hey," JD says, after a hesitation of just slightly too long, eyes flicking over him, trying to read his cues. He holds up the plastic shopping bag. "Realized I had them put this stuff in the wrong bag. You've probably got about another hour before the shakes set in; drink this and then try to sleep through them if you can." 

Spence takes the bag, juggles things so he can look into it. Four bottles of what looks like juice, until he reaches in and takes one out, checking the label. Pediatric electrolyte solution. Apple flavored. "Sorry," JD says, catching the half-twitch of grimace he tries to keep from his face. "Only flavor they had. Woulda gotten you Gatorade, except it's not as effective."

"Yeah," Spence says, his own voice sounding off in his ears. "They told us, but I, uh, forgot. GT&O was a while ago." A while ago, and everyone had thought _can't happen here, can't happen anymore_ , even though standard equipment includes a package of Pedialyte powder in your tac vest and, yeah, a couple of salt tablets in your gear. He grasps for what pieces he can remember. Drink lots of water, with Pedialyte if you can, just plain salt if you can't. Eat something high in carbohydrates and protein. Get to the infirmary as soon as possible. Apparently his body knows what it wants, even if he hadn't remembered at all.

JD nods, accepting it at face value, somehow managing to avoid any hint of censure. "You don't really start to remember until your second or third ride on the Magical Mystery Tour," he says. Nods to the takeout bag. "You remembered enough, at least. Shoulda waited. I would've run over for you."

"Didn't know the offer was open," Spence says, as carefully as he can. The last thing he wants right now is to imply that he's offering any kind of rebuke. Tried that in the car. Didn't work out too well. His ears are still ringing from the revelations.

"You're still mine for a little while yet," JD says. "Until I hand you over."

Too much there to even begin to think about. Spence sighs. Transfers the Target bag into the same hand with the McDonald's bag, swipes his keycard again. Thank fuck it works this time; he isn't left struggling with it in front of JD. "You might as well come in," he says. _And I might as well make the offer before you invite yourself._

JD follows him, and if Spence notices the way his eyes sweep the room and clear it quickly, well, it's only because he's doing the same thing himself. JD leans on the doorframe. Polite of him, really, giving Spence as much space as possible, and Spence takes it as politeness even though it means JD is between him and the door.

_Fuck_ , he doesn't even know what's wrong with him. JD is not a threat. JD is _family_.

(JD is Jack O'Neill, the man the SGC still tells campfire tales about, the man half the SGC wants to grow up to _be_ , and he's looking at Spence like he can't decide if there's going to be trouble or not, and Spence doesn't want to know what JD might define as trouble after six months of living with trouble in his b -- at his doorstep.)

"Here's the thing," JD says, slowly, flat and uninflected, staring across the room at nothing in particular. "It doesn't matter how much combat you've seen before, or what kind of missions you've run, or how many times you've watched the guy next to you get his insides splattered over your nice clean uniform, because that's not the danger at the SGC. Never has been. And I don't know what it's like right now, and I don't know what kind of things Benton's had you running and what kind of missions you've been on that've blown up in your face, and I don't know what you've seen and what stories you've heard, so I don't know if you need this talk or not. But in case you do. Standing toe to toe with a snake and trying to figure out how to deal with it and come out sane on the other end is something that you can't predict, and it's something you can't plan for, and it's something they can't train you into. It either happens or it doesn't. You start thinking about it, you start dwelling on it and replaying it and trying to shuffle things around so you can make sense of your reactions, and you're going to be one of the ones where it doesn't." 

Spence opens his mouth to say something. JD shoots him one quick glare, and he shuts his mouth while JD keeps going. "I know your family. You like to process. You like to poke and prod and think about it and try to map out what you did and what you felt and why. And you're not going to be able to do that this time. Because standing in the same room as one of them has nothing to do with your feelings, and nothing to do with any kind of logic or sense. It hits you in the back of the brain where the ape still lives. The more you try to make sense of it, the more you're going to think that you must have been overreacting, that you must be too weak to handle it, that there's gotta be something wrong with you. You weren't, you aren't, and there isn't. That's the most dangerous thing you have to face. Not the danger of running into a platoon of Jaffa and getting yourself fried. The danger of looking inside your head and losing your nerve. First seven years of the program, we lost three hundred and eleven people, dead or crazy, and about half of them had gone through something like what you just went through in the six months before they went. Don't let yourself be one of them. You're worth too fucking much."

The burger Spence ate is a rock in his stomach. "I --" he starts, and JD makes a quick slashing gesture in midair, and he shuts his mouth again.

"Shut up," JD says, still quiet and matter-of-fact. Spence gets the impression it's the only way he can get through this. 

JD crosses the room, slower on his feet than Spence remembers him being, looking run-down and weary and like all he really wants out of life right now is for this to be all _over_. (Spence can sympathize.) He picks up a bottle of the electrolyte solution, uncaps it, puts it in Spence's hand. Spence drinks it, automatically. He remembers the taste sucking, and it still does, somehow sharp and chalky at the same time, but as soon as it hits his tongue he finds that he's shuddering in revulsion and draining half the bottle all at once. 

JD only stays in front of him until he sees Spence drinking; once he's satisfied, he takes up his perch at the door again. Shoves his hands into his pockets. Stares at the carpet. "The other guy isn't gonna think to take you through this. Not his fault. Been a long damn time. And it's the kind of talk your team leader's supposed to give you, after the first time you trip it, but Benton's not here and I am, so I will: they're going to make you go see a shrink, check out how you're dealing, check out whether you're coping. They try to help. None of 'em has a single fucking clue, because they've never been there. Smile and nod and lie through your fucking teeth, and then go find Benton or Nat Reynolds or Stan Kovacek and tell 'em Jack said to take you out and clean you up. And then go up to 18 and tell Nyan Jack said you might not be eligible for the Order of the Revolving Pearly Gates, but you damn well earned your Golden Coffin. Couple of years, you'll realize that the unofficial awards are worth more, anyway."

Spence finishes the first bottle. Feels like someone else's hand, reaching out for the second, uncapping it, drinking again. JD looks up at the motion, and nods with something very much like approval. Spence tries not to let it get to him, one way or the other. It's harder than he thought it would be.

"Mitchell and I told you two when you said yes," JD says. "Most important command in the history of the service. Hasn't changed. Never will. And being able to get through it has nothing to do with being fast and nothing to do with being smart and everything to do with whether or not you can handle commuting from the normal to the _fucking insane_ six times a week and twice on Sundays. I recommended you two because I thought you could. Haven't seen a damn thing to change my mind. What I have seen is someone who could be the one standing between us and a smoking crater of burnt-out rock, without backing down and without fucking up. And I'm damn well going to sleep better at night knowing you're there." He does meet Spence's eyes then, calm and in command, and the shape of his body seems like nothing more than a uniform he's wearing around those tired old eyes. "Don't let it break you. Or I swear to God, I will fucking well _walk_ across the country to beat some sense into you myself if I have to."

Spence can't even tell what he's feeling. Elated, and proud, and terrified, and wary, and over all of it a veil of numbness, like he's viewing the world through a haze of non-emotion, like his brain and his endocrine system aren't quite on speaking terms. "I won't," he says, even though he has no idea how he might accomplish that. Except JD's just told him. Or given him the outline, at least. Maybe it'll have to do.

JD lifts a hand to scrub at his face, for one instant seeming impossibly translucent in the reflection of the shitty fluorescent light, faded around the edges like there's barely nothing left of him. "I'm putting you on a plane to DC at fifteen hundred tomorrow. I don't know how long he'll want to keep you. Checkout here is twelve hundred. I'll knock around eleven forty-five. Eat the rest of the food that's in that bag; force yourself if you have to. Drink the rest of the Pedialyte, sack out as soon as you can. You're going to be tired, cold, and hungry for the next, oh, eighteen hours or so. Pile all the blankets on the bed and turn up the heat. If you're the type who sleeps with the light on, the night after, don't leave on the overhead. If you wake up in the middle of the night and see the light over you, it'll probably trip your tripwires. The weird sensory shit will be fading by the morning and should be gone in forty-eight. It's normal. Don't freak. I think that about covers it. Anything else you need to know?"

So many things Spence could ask, so many questions he could give voice to, and he doesn't ask any of them. What he asks, sounding broken and halting but still somehow like _himself_ , is: "Are you gonna be all right?"

The question surprises JD. He can see it surprising JD, the split-flash shock of blankness that spreads outward from JD's eyes, like the blast radius of a detonation. Then JD smiles, and it's the most terrifying look that Spence has ever seen on his face. "I'm always fine," JD says. 

Spence wonders how long it'll take him before he can lie to himself that well.

 

**\+ 6.5 hours**

Jack's office in the Pentagon is nicer than any of the offices Sam ever worked in when she was stationed there, but that's what you get when you're a two-star general, she supposes. He's waiting for her behind his desk when _Odyssey_ beams her in. She's always thought it was a nice touch that the transport operators try so hard to calibrate the rematerialization so you arrive facing whomever else is in the room. It's a little touch, but she knows how long they spent on the code to get it right.

He looks as tired as he'd sounded on the phone, but he stands as soon as the pixie-dust sparkle recedes from her field of vision and comes over to take her bag from her. "Hey," he says, clutching the strap of her duffel bag in both hands, not quite meeting her eyes. 

They've spoken two, three times a week since that afternoon out in the desert. Personal, professional. She's learned more about him in the past six months than she learned in the whole ten years before. It's the first time she's seen him since then, though, and the physical reality of him, standing so close that she'd be able to feel his presence even if she closed her eyes, is something new and different. It's the first time, she realizes, that he's ever been in her orbit without radiating some essential closed-offness, without his body language shutting down any hope of kinaesthetic awareness. He doesn't know what to do, and she doesn't either, but at least he's _there_ with her, fully, completely. The wary receptiveness puts her a little in mind of the way Daniel used to look, when he was just waiting for another of his brilliant ideas to be shot down, and she thinks of Daniel on Atlantis and the terse four-line replies she receives to her ten-page emails and wonders how long she's going to be seeing echoes of each other in them all.

"Hi," she says, biting her lip, knowing she probably sounds asinine, and Jack's lips quirk, just a little. He sets the duffel bag down on the chair behind him and takes a step forward, closer, closer. She barely has time to register the fractional hesitation, the indrawn breath, before he puts his arms around her shoulders, stiff and awkward, heartfelt anyway. He doesn't linger, but he doesn't draw away too quickly, either. She has time to put her arms around his waist and squeeze lightly, feeling the layer of softness developing over his whipcord-thin frame, the rasp of his overstarched dress shirt. 

"Thanks for coming so quickly," he says, into her hair, and then lets her go and takes a step back.

The hug makes her feel lighter somehow, like they've re-set their boundary markers, like the Jack whose halting voice keeps her company through the arid summer nights is still there underneath this awkward stranger. She tries to think of how Cam might handle this, what the best and most kind thing to do for the Jack-model she's trying to build inside her head would be, and she knows, now, that what he's looking for, what he values most, is understanding without having to ask for it. She doesn't understand him. Not yet. But she's working on it.

So she nods, and tries to communicate -- with her face, with her voice, with the way she looks around herself and the way she looks at him -- that she's here, without question, without restriction, for as long as he needs her. "Always," she says, and is rewarded with a little more of a smile, this one less stilted. "Show me what you need me to do. I'm yours as long as you need me."

Relief flashes in his eyes for half a second; she wouldn't see it if she weren't studying him so closely. "You might regret saying that," he says, as lightly as possible, and gestures to a stack of file folders on his desk. Well, really, it's more like a heap. "We have a lot to get through. Irene's promised to keep the coffee coming." He takes a deep breath. "But first I have to tell you what the kid pulled this time."

He gestures to the visitor's seat, and Sam sits down in it. She promises herself that she'll keep her mouth shut -- because anything Jack has to brace himself so clearly for can't be good -- but it's hard, especially when he gets to the part about JD's unlikely ally. "You didn't --" she blurts, and then stops herself. He stops talking and raises one eyebrow, makes a little "go on" gesture. "You didn't mention any of this to me," she says, feeling strangely hurt. She'd thought he'd told her everything. As much as possible, at least.

Jack sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose and shutting his eyes. (Daniel's gesture, again, and she wonders which gestures of her own Jack's adopted and she can't see, because they look too familiar to her.) "I didn't know most of it," he says. "Some of it. Very little. And believe me, I'd like to kick him into next week for failing to mention most of the critical parts, but ..." He sighs again. "I know why he didn't brief me. I probably wouldn't have briefed me either."

It only takes her a second to realize what he means. _Ba'al_. She'd thought, back at the very beginning, that it was going to be hard for JD to live under Ba'al's thumb for however long this operation lasted, and then she'd forgotten. She still doesn't know what happened when Jack was Ba'al's prisoner -- she's never asked; Jack's never offered -- but she's known for a while that he's not rational on the subject. If she'd been on a mission undercover, dealing with Ba'al, she might have trusted her own judgement over Jack's too.

Except -- no; her own judgement _is_ Jack's judgement, most of the time, and has been since the days she realized that she could learn more from him than she's ever been able to learn from any superior officer before and probably any superior officer subsequent, and while she'll push and she'll prod, pry into his thinking and stand up to him when she thinks he's wrong, she always caves in the end. It's not a comfortable realization, somehow. Loyalty is one thing, but she knows Jack has never wanted a junior officer without a spine, without the courage of her convictions, and she frowns, biting her lip, thinking back -- ah, but he's not her commanding officer anymore, even _if_ he's putting her on detached duty with him again for the coming weeks or months, and it's something she won't have to worry about. But she files it away anyway.

(It only takes her a few seconds after that to realize what the problem after _that_ is. It's been a long time since she's been able to think of JD and Jack as being the same person, as even coming from the same _place_ , and no matter how much she tells herself that there's the mind of a man in his fifties looking out from behind those child's eyes, it doesn't help. But JD and Jack _are_ the same person, or were, and the man who's sitting across the desk from her and the man who's sitting across the country both share the same memories of Ba'al's prisons, whatever those memories might be, and she doesn't _understand_ this. At all.)

Jack is watching her thinking, and she wonders how much of what she's thinking shows in her face, because he's gone still and quiet and dangerous. She licks her lips. "I'm sorry," she says. She doesn't know what she's apologizing for. 

Neither does he -- she can tell -- but he drops his eyes to his hands anyway, nodding as though to say _it's okay_ even though she thinks it probably isn't. Once upon a time she would have gotten angry at herself for leading the conversation down these lines. Now, she just lets it go.

"Look," Jack says, abruptly. "This is all completely new to me. And I'm not very good at it, and I'm -- I'm probably never going to be. But that doesn't mean that I don't -- that you aren't -- that we --"

Sam reaches over, across the desk that separates them, and puts her hand over his wrist. It doesn't feel awkward; it's surprising, how awkward it doesn't feel, his wristbones oddly fragile-feeling beneath her hands despite their bulk. "I know," she says, because she does, because she's uncertain about a dozen different things in her life right now, but the one thing she's somehow not uncertain of is that Jack O'Neill cares for her. It's ironic, really, that she should only have the chance for something she always thought she wanted after finding out the secrets that should have meant that she'd never get it. But why should her personal life be any less insane than the rest of her life?

Jack takes a deep breath. "When this is over," he says, and she can't help it; her heart thumps in her chest, once, so loudly that she thinks he might be able to hear it. "Not -- all of this. That'll take forever. But when _this_ is over --" He knocks his knuckles against the smallest of the stacks of file folders. "Come back to the townhouse with me? I'd like to -- I mean, not that -- it's just --" He breaks off, and she can see the instant when he decides that all of this is _utterly ridiculous_. The sound of his laughter, quick and mercurial, makes her smile. "Told you I was bad at this," he says.

"I am, too," Sam says, her tone wry, her lips rounding. "But: yes. I will." She takes a deep breath of her own. "Whatever the invitation consists of."

It's explicit enough that he'll catch her meaning, and not so explicit that he'll feel pressured, she thinks, and the quickly-shuttered look of surprise in his face tells her she's right. Then he smiles. "Okay," he says, turning his hand over in her grip, pulling his fingers through hers (and squeezing, briefly) before letting them slip free. "Then let me finish briefing you, and then we'll divvy up the files and get started. I'll get Irene to bring in the coffee. And remind me to call Colonel Fisher in the morning and tell him I stole you, before you get listed as AWOL." 

"Yes, sir," Sam says, still smiling, and for the first time in as long as she can remember, the honorific is a joke between them, not a shield at all.

 

**\+ 7 hours**

He's dialed five numbers of Nielson's phone number before he catches himself and clears the keypad with one sharp gesture.

He is _smarter than this_. Nielson's nothing but a human. For fuck's sweet sake (and there's Nielson in his vocabulary, too; say what you will about these creatures, they know how to swear), he's run systems and empires for tens of thousands of their years without the assistance of one skinny, mouthy, obnoxious little twit. He'll just have to put extra attention towards _remembering_ that Nielson was never his to command in the first place. He's known that all along. Wouldn't do to place too much trust in the hands of one who refuses to grip it.

(Trust. Such a _human_ concept. It's one of the things he could almost learn to respect them for.)

Instead, he calls Melissa. Who knows nothing, although he's never been certain what she suspects. "Pull some files for me," he orders her. There are three or four people whom he's been considering as Nielson's replacement; he'll need at least two people to fill Nielson's shoes, but that's not unexpected. Nielson _was_ quite exceptional, after all.

 

**\+ 9 hours**

Malcolm Barrett is sound asleep and dreaming of vacation somewhere with ocean breezes (and _no work_ ) when his phone rings. He doesn't know what ring it's on when it finally wakes him, so he sits bolt upright and clutches for it quickly before it can go to voicemail. He doesn't usually get the phone call in the middle of the night, but when he does, it's important. "Barrett," he says.

Pause for a second, just long enough for him to wonder if it's a wrong number, and then the voice he's come to recognize pretty damn well in the past six months. "Agent Barrett? Jack O'Neill. Sorry to wake you at this hour." 

Barrett sneaks a glance at the clock. Two in the morning. Goes to figure. "S'okay, General," he says, stifling a yawn. Better to be formal; O'Neill hasn't fed him any of the code-words that say they're surveillance-proof, but he hasn't fed any of the code-words that says there's an emergency, either, so Barrett will wait to panic until he knows what's going on. "What can I do for you?"

"We've had a little incident over here," O'Neill says, and whatever bit of sleepiness was left burns away, because when O'Neill says _incident_ he makes it sound like _Earth's likely to be toast in three point two seconds, so listen up while I tell you how we're going to keep it from getting there_. "It's not the end of the world --" and Barrett barely avoids choking, because the man says it with such bland grace that you'd never know there were times when it _could_ be the end of the world, whatever 'it' is -- "But it can't exactly wait until morning, either. I hate to drag you out of bed --"

But Barrett's already setting his feet down on the floor; saw _that_ coming. "S'okay," he repeats. "If I wanted a guarantee of a good night's sleep, I wouldn't've joined the department."

O'Neill snorts. "Say that twice," he says. "Look, I need you to keep your mouth shut about this. Put your pants on, put your shoes on, grab your briefcase, and get out the door without calling anybody. I'll brief you when you get here, but until then, don't tell anybody where you're going or what you're up to. Not even your partner. Got it?"

"Got it," Barrett says, because that's enough of a clue. They've both known his partner Martinson's as dirty as a dollar bill dropped in a sewer, and working with the guy for the past six months has been excruciating. O'Neill's telling him, without telling him at all, that something's up with the op that's supposed to go down next week, and all he can do is pray that whatever it is won't keep Nielson from pulling off the miracle he's promised he can pull off. "Your office?"

"Actually, no," O'Neill says, and damn if the man isn't laughing at him. "Slightly rounder one. Come in through the OEOB, through Seventeenth; we'll make sure someone's there to pick you up. And Barrett?"

Barrett's pulling on his pants, one-handed, as fast as he can. "Yeah?"

"Don't bother to stop to do your makeup. We're in a bit of a hurry."

O'Neill hangs up the phone, and Barrett snorts and shoves his own phone into his pants. A year ago, he'd thought of Jack O'Neill as the slightly crazy, burned-out old soldier who'd been pushed upwards to get him out of the way and off the line, given a sinecure job (by people who knew exactly to the inch how much he'd hate desk work and were doing it to repay him for years of making their lives miserable) and serving out the last years until his retirement with quiet resignation. After nine months of working with O'Neill on this operation, he knows that the only part of that impression that's true is the crazy part. O'Neill's exactly where he wants to be, doing exactly what he wants to be doing, and he's brilliant at it. The most brilliant part is the way that everyone in DC thinks of him as the crazy, burned-out old soldier with a sinecure job and no desire to rock the boat.

The fact that O'Neill feels comfortable enough with him to tease him, the fact that he knows O'Neill's act is just an act, makes Barrett feel pretty darn good.

This time of night, there's no traffic, so he arrives at the Eisenhower building -- which everyone in town still calls the Old Executive Office Building, and probably will for at least another generation -- within half an hour. Getting through security is a snap; he clips the visitor's badge to his shirt, and the security guard (who's wide awake and alert, though disinclined to conversation, which is good, because Barrett didn't have time to make a pot of coffee before he came over and he wouldn't have been allowed to bring a coffee mug in even if he had) tells him to wait for his escort. He shoves the hand that's not holding the briefcase into his pocket and leans against one of the columns, stifling another yawn. O'Neill had better have coffee waiting for him. (Especially if he's here to actually meet with _the President_ , which is what O'Neill implied -- and why else would they be meeting here if not? -- and if O'Neill was yanking his chain, he's going to _kill_ the man.)

It's only a few more minutes until a voice interrupts his thoughts. "Agent Barrett?"

He opens his eyes to see one of the Pentagon liaisons to the SGC -- Davis, he remembers after a second of searching his memory banks -- smiling at him. Davis looks tired, mostly around the eyes, but his uniform is immaculate. "Yeah," he says, or tries to; the yawn catches him again, and he covers it as fast as he can, blushing a little. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Davis says, his eyes crinkling up a little in a smile. He holds out a hand to shake. "Paul Davis, if you don't remember. The General sent me to bring you on over." He pauses for a second. "There's coffee, I promise."

"The magic words," Barrett says, returning the handshake.

Davis laughs. "Trust me, I think General O'Neill needs it more than you do. Come on." 

Davis leads Barrett through the hallways; Barrett gets lost nearly immediately, but he's always had a horrible sense of direction. He's never been this far into the complex; he's certainly never been in the Oval Office itself, which is where they wind up. He's a little startled to see how quiet and subdued the White House is, even though it is two in the morning; if whatever crisis he's been brought here to help handle is bad enough to pull him out of bed, there should be people awake and around, but the halls are empty except for a few Secret Service agents, who don't say a word and don't meet their eyes. 

It takes him a minute, when Davis shows him into the Oval Office itself, for him to even recognize the people in the room; they all look wiped and wired at the same time. One is General O'Neill, in his uniform but without the jacket or tie; one is Sam Carter, in BDU pants and a black t-shirt. His brain refuses to quite admit that the third person in the room is President Hayes, wearing a pair of sweatpants and a plain white undershirt, barefoot. He's never seen the man in anything less than full business regalia. (Then again, he's never seen the man in the White House proper, either; for all he knows, Hayes wanders around in his pajamas whenever there aren't people around.) They're sitting at the couches, with file folders piled on the coffeetable between them and spilling over onto the floor. 

"Agent Barrett," President Hayes says, getting up and coming over to offer his hand to shake. "Thanks for coming. I'm sorry we had to get you out of bed."

"Quite all right, sir," Barrett says, automatically -- when the President calls, you come running, no matter what time of day it is. "What can I do for you?"

"Kid jumped the gun," O'Neill says, sounding crabby and overtired. He leans his head back, over the edge of the couch, blinking upside-down at Barrett and Davis. "Pulled the trigger about nine, ten hours ago now. Which means that we've got a list longer than my arm of people we have to take into custody before sunrise if we want to have any chance at all of doing this undetected. You're going to be up most of the night, I'm afraid."

It's a bit of a shock to hear; he'd thought he would have another week to prep things. "Great," he says. He takes a deep breath. "I, uh, take it that Director McFadden --"

"Cheer up," O'Neill says. "How often does a guy get to say that he arrested his boss?"

 

**\+ 14 hours**

"Here," Jack says, nudging Sam's elbow, and she opens her eyes to find that he's holding out an extra-large paper cup of coffee. No steam rising from it, so it probably isn't anywhere near as hot as she'd like, but at this point, 'hot' takes a backseat to 'contains caffeine', so she takes it from him and gulps down half. It's doctored precisely the way she takes it, half a milk and two sugars, and she takes a second to appreciate his attention to detail; it's one of the small things they all know about each other and have for a while. To this day, she always forgets, when she's stopping for coffee before heading into work in the morning, that she's picking up one cup and not four.

"Thanks," she says, belatedly, remembering her manners. "How're you doing?"

"Eh," he says, as though it's enough of an answer, and sits next to her on the steps. Bolling AFB is quiet in the early-morning hour; there's enough humidity that she can tell it's going to be a scorcher once the sun is fully up, but in these few moments of dawn, it's almost pleasant out here. Certainly, after so long in Nevada, it's nice to be somewhere where the back of her throat doesn't hurt from the aridity. "How'd your last run go?"

"Came quietly," she says. They're holding their suspects in Bolling's on-base lockup for now; there'll probably be some screaming about that, since three-quarters of the people they've arrested so far are civilian, not military, but Jack had said -- and President Hayes agreed -- that a military holding cell would probably be better security. The base commander hadn't been all that pleased to find he was being invaded, but a phone call from Hayes had smoothed things over. "How's yours?"

Jack snorts. "Next time I say I miss the thrill and excitement of field work, remind me that I'm too old to be getting punched in the face on a regular basis," he says. She squints at his profile in the yellow-orangish streetlights; sure enough, his cheekbone is starting to bruise. "The MPs I brought with me got him cuffed and calmed down, at least. And he was the last on my list, at least for the time being. You?"

"Yeah, I'm done too," she says. "Barrett has another three, and Major Davis has one more. I think that gets us through the list of ones that we're sure of."

Jack nods and steals her cup of coffee for a sip; she watches, amused. He drinks his black, and he makes the ritual face as he hands it back. "Kid promised to send the list of Ba'al's agents back with Griffith tonight. Pretty sure there'll be some we missed on it, so I'm betting we're going to get to repeat the performance tonight," he says. "You about ready to go catch some sack time so you're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for round two?"

Sam clutches at her cup of coffee. "I'd really like to be here for the questioning," she says, trying to keep her voice neutral. "If you don't want me sitting in directly, I'd like to at least watch through the security glass."

To his credit, he frowns. "Of course," he says. "Why wouldn't -- oh. No, Hayes put me in charge of things, and we don't want to move on things until we get the kid's list and can make sure that the guy Hayes has in mind as Special Prosecutor isn't dirty. With charges of treason, sedition, and aiding and abetting, we can hold these guys for a little while, at least. I'm not going to start the interviews until tomorrow." He makes a face. "I feel dirty doing it, but there's no way I'm going to be on the top of my game until I get some sleep. Figured you could use some downtime, too."

"Well, when you put it that way," Sam says. The backs of her eyeballs feel gritty, in the way that says she's too out-of-practice with twenty-four hours straight of work. It's been a long time since the fate of the world rested in her hands. She doesn't miss it. She bites her lip. "I could go find on-base housing if you --"

"No," Jack says, speaking over the top of her sentence before she can even finish it. "I've got a guest room, if you --"

"I --" Sam starts, and then they both fall silent, making rueful faces at each other. They've been working together just fine all night; in front of other people, they've had no problems being General O'Neill and Lieutenant Colonel Carter, professional colleagues, long-term coworkers. Jack and Sam are different people wearing the same skins, and she thinks neither of them knows how this is supposed to go. Oddly, the mutual discomfort makes it easier to bear, somehow; it's nice to think that she isn't the only one floundering.

"Lemme try this again," Jack says. "C'mon back to the townhouse with me. We can get a good five hours down before we have to be up and running again. Where you sleep is up to you."

Sam nods, hesitant, uncertain. She finishes off the cup of coffee and rises from the steps; Jack follows, taking the cup from her and tossing it into the nearby trashcan. He drove them both over here; he doesn't use a car-and-driver, which she wasn't at all surprised to realize. It's a quiet walk back to the parking lot where he stowed the truck. When they get there, he holds the door for her, which she would find annoying in just about anyone else and finds charming in him.

He has the truck radio tuned to NPR; he fiddles with the volume until it's just a low buzz, loud enough to keep the truck's cabin from silence, soft enough that she'd have to strain to hear it if she actually wanted to follow any of the stories. She doesn't, really; she's content to rest her cheek against the passenger's side window and watch the other cars fighting for road space in the grey and misty dawn. Traffic is moderate-to-heavy, already clogging the highway as they drive up 295 and the streets as they make their way into downtown proper, but it's not bad enough to actually make them sit; it manifests mostly in a steady thirty-five miles an hour and a constant muttered stream of imprecations from the driver's side. "Sorry," Jack says, when she looks over at him after a particularly vehement hissing. "I hate this town."

"It's all right," Sam says, laughing. "I do too." She won't ever, in a million years, tell him that she thinks it's cute, how he'll grumble without _swearing_ in front of her, even though she knows all the words and has heard him use them a thousand times before. 

He's living in a brick-fronted townhouse in Georgetown, a nice enough neighborhood but nothing like anything she would have imagined he'd pick for himself. When he parks the car, he's the one to take her bags from behind the seat; she considers making a token protest, but it wouldn't get her anywhere, so she lets it go. "I'll warn you," he says, as they walk up to the front door. "The place came furnished. It's ... bad."

'Bad' is an understatement -- the foyer looks like an explosion in a colonial museum, about as far from her understanding of Jack's sense of decorating as it's possible to get -- and he catches her looking around herself as she toes off her shoes and he locks the door behind them; the face he makes is entertaining. "Told you," he says. 

"I didn't think you meant it was _this_ bad," Sam says, and then bites her lip; she probably shouldn't insult his house, even if he was the one to start it. 

But he only laughs. "You should've seen it before I had the worst bits sent to storage. You, uh, want something to eat before --"

Sam shakes her head. "I'm really wiped," she says. "If you don't mind, I think I'd like to head straight to bed." She takes a deep breath; she's been thinking of ways to say this for the entire drive over here, and none of them sounded right in her head, so it's probably better to just say it straight out, without trying to be coy or demure. "You, uh, don't need to put me in the guest room." 

For a second she thinks he might say something, standing there in his foyer with one shoe off, his keys still in his hand, her bags slung over his shoulder; she wonders if she's said the wrong thing, failed to catch some hint or cue. Then he seems to shake himself, just a little, and nods. "Okay," he says, calm and quiet, and toes off the other shoe. "Come on, then. Upstairs and to the left."

She trails along behind him, craning her neck as she goes; what she can see of the house is just as bad as the foyer, but the master bedroom, when he leads her into it, is blessedly free of fussy antiques. Looking at the bed, she thinks it might be the furniture from his house in Colorado; the sheets are still tangled from the last time he slept in them, and that seems odd, since she would have guessed he'd be the type to make his bed every day unless pressed for time. 

Jack sets her duffel on the chair by the door. "Bathroom's through there," he says, making an awkward gesture. "Take your time. I'm going to just --" He transfers the wave so it's indicating the hallway they came in through. "Not going to be able to sleep unless I eat something to soak up all of this coffee. I'll be back up in about five, ten minutes."

Sam nods. "Okay," she says, standing here in his bedroom, in his house, in his _space_ , feeling uncertain and a little out-of-it and more than a little ready to drop facefirst into the covers and sleep until tomorrow. "You, uh, mind if I take a shower?"

"Not at all," Jack says. "Soap and shampoo's in the shower. Towels in the linen closet in the bathroom. If you need a toothbrush, there's a new one in the medicine cabinet." He stands there for a second after he finishes speaking, like there's something else he's trying to figure out how to say, and then he turns on his heel and walks out again without further instruction. She can hear his feet on the steps a minute later.

Left alone in his bedroom, she doesn't give in to the temptation to open drawers and poke through knicknacks; she just opens her duffel bag and rummages through it until she finds clean clothes to sleep in. What those clothes should be gives her a moment's pause, but he's seen her in every stage of dress and undress possible over seven years of serving on the front lines together; when she catches herself holding a pair of sweatpants she'd never in a million years sleep in (too heavy), she swears at herself, quietly, and puts them back down. 

She brought a few pairs of the women's boxer shorts she tends to use as pajama bottoms. She takes one out, and adds a lightweight tank top as well. Swap the boxer shorts for gym shorts and they're what she'd wear to work out; nothing sultry, nothing seductive, but nothing overly-concealing, either. He can take her the way she is. Somehow, she doesn't think that'll be a problem.

She brushes her teeth and takes a five-minute shower, the water warm and lulling, just scrubbing off enough of the day's grunge and grime that she won't feel like she's getting the sheets filthy just by lying on them. She catches herself dithering about whether or not to shave her legs, and shuts the shower off with a snap of the wrist before she can work herself up about it. _Sleep_. Nothing more.

When she comes out of the bathroom, her hair toweled as dry as she can get it, dressed in her boxers and tank top, Jack is back upstairs; he's in the process of pulling the curtains across each set of windows. They're dark and heavy, and with them shut, almost nothing of the early-morning light makes it through. Must not be the first time he's had to catch some sleep during the day, she thinks, and then realizes that she actually doesn't know much about what precisely he's doing here, what kind of work his daily routine consists of. He seems to have had much the same thought as she had, about the choice of clothing; he's wearing a pair of boxers too, plain grey cotton, and a white undershirt that's so threadbare she can see the lines and shadows of his muscles beneath it.

"Hey," she says, quiet and uncertain, and he turns as he finishes closing the last curtain. His eyes flick up and down her body, and the smile he gives her warms her belly. 

"Hey," he says, just as quiet. Something's changed in the way he regards her, though, and she realizes what it is; this is _Jack_ looking at _Sam_ , not General O'Neill looking at Lieutenant Colonel Carter, in a way it hasn't been since she first arrived here eight madcap hours ago. "Brought you up a bottle of water, in case you were thirsty. On the bedside table."

"Thanks," Sam says, following his wave, going over to uncap the bottle and drinking from it. "I, uh, guess this is my side of the bed?"

"Don't really have a preference," Jack says. He runs his hand through his hair, leaving it standing on end. Silence for a second. "So," he says, just as she's about to try to think of something -- anything -- to break it. "This is awkward."

Oddly, hearing him say it breaks a little bit of the awkwardness for her. "I could get my phone and call you," she offers. "We could say goodnight that way. We're used to _that_ , right?"

It makes him laugh, the same choppy barking laugh he uses in their phone conversations when she's said something that genuinely amuses him -- she's not sure she's ever heard him actually full-out _laugh_ , not while not under alien influence of some sort. "Might work better," he says. Then takes a deep breath, bracing himself, and crosses the room so he's standing in front of her. "Or we could just do this and get it over with."

He telegraphs his moves well in advance, slow and steady, like he's trying to give her a chance to pull away if she wants to. She doesn't want to pull away. Her heart is thumping like it's about to leap out of her chest: all her dreams, all her fantasies, from the years when they were nothing more than a pipe-dream to the past six months when they've become more and more possible, all narrowed down to this moment. He fits one hand against her cheek, his thumb stroking her cheekbone as though he doesn't even know he's doing it, and leans, slowly, to kiss her. 

His mouth is warm, and his lips are dry, and it's neither too rushed nor too demanding. It's not the kind of kiss she's dreamed of, where he claims her mouth and makes promises against her tongue, but it's not the kind of kiss you give your maiden aunt, either. It's just a sweet, soft introduction, a careful testing of the waters, and she tries to kiss back enthusiasm without urgency even as she's forcing herself not to read his body for further cues about how much he is or isn't enjoying it. 

She's promised herself that she isn't going to read too much into his confessions about Daniel, into JD's relationship with Cameron. She's promised herself that she's going to trust him to tell her the truth. If he's kissing her, if he's said that he wants to try to see whether or not _they_ can work, she'll trust him to know his own mind, and tell her if anything changes. She'll give him that much faith. She might be setting herself up for heartbreak, but she's always known that his hands can handle the fragile and tender things with care.

When he pulls back, after a few warm minutes, he's smiling. "So, that didn't suck," he says. 

Sam licks her lips and laughs. "Is that the best you can do?" she says, daring to tease, liking the laugh she gets in return. "'Didn't suck' isn't exactly the best compliment I've ever gotten."

The smile fades from his face, and she'd worry, except the look he's giving her in return is dark and warm and full of affectionate promise. "Gimme a break, Carter," he says, and she'd worry that he's still calling her by last name, except she thinks that's just how he'll think of her until their end of days. Hell, JD still calls Cam 'Mitchell'. "I've been up for over twenty-four. Come on. Sleep: it does a body good."

"I'm pretty sure that's milk," she says, deadpan -- biting back the 'sir' that still feels like it should belong at the end of the sentence -- and is rewarded with another laugh. He steps back, and it's like the tension has been broken; she watches him fold back the covers without feeling awkward or uncertain at all, and he climbs into the bed and pats the other side in invitation. 

"C'mere," Jack says, settling himself down so he's lying on his side on the far side of the bed, facing her, and she clicks off the light on the bedside table and spoons up against him in the mostly-dark. He drapes an arm over her side, pressing his palm up against her belly and burying his nose in her still-damp hair, and the touch doesn't feel sexual at all. It just feels _good_ , being held like this, being close to him, clean and warm and comfortable on sheets that smell like his skin, the heat of him snuggled up against her back.

"Good night, Jack," she says, closing her eyes, and she can feel his nose nuzzling her scalp a second before his lips press against the base of her skull, and it makes something warm flutter in her chest. 

"Good night, Carter," he says right back, soft in her ear, and she falls asleep to his thumb stroking over the edge of her belly, so slow and gentle she doesn't think he even knows he's doing it at all.

 

**\+ 17 hours**

The phone rings right at the stroke of 0700, just when he's getting ready to put down his paperwork and go gear up for SG-3's mission to P79-XC2, and Nat Reynolds is an old soldier down in the bones, down where it counts, so he knows damn well that it's the sound of trouble calling. Not that he hasn't been expecting it, all the way through all of this, and keeping it off his face has been the hardest part. He's no stranger to secrecy and he understands classified -- couldn't have gotten this far without that understanding -- but never the way Jack was. Doesn't know how the man does it.

General Landry's face is sour when Nat reports as ordered, and Nat's not just an old soldier but an old Marine, and Marines know their cues. He draws himself up into his best posture and stares at a spot just over Landry's shoulder. "Sir," he says: careful, neutral. _Reporting for duty_ and _not going to give you cause to yell at me_ , all at once.

Landry doesn't say anything for a long minute, long enough that Nat has to run through a list of all SG-3's latest missions to see what he might have fucked up so badly that he deserves a chewing-out. Nothing comes to mind, so he starts going through what his boys might have gotten up to in the Mountain, comes up blank, and is all the way down to wondering if someone's gotten into shit down in town before Landry finally breaks his stare and says, "Would you care to tell me what the hell is going on in my command, Colonel?"

_A hell of a lot of things you don't know about, sir_ would probably get Nat shoved in a deep dark hole for insubordination, so he keeps his face carefully neutral. "I'm sorry, sir, could you be more specific?"

"Oh, don't give me that," Landry says, but it's just griping -- he's worked with Landry long enough to know when Landry's yelling about something in particular and when Landry's just yelling -- so Nat keeps his mouth shut. "I had a very interesting request on my desk when I came in this morning. Seems that the pleasure of your company is being requested in Washington for a few weeks. You wanna tell me why Jack O'Neill wants you in particular?"

"Couldn't say, sir," Nat tells the bookshelf behind Landry. It's not even a lie; he _couldn't_ say, not yet, not without talking to Jack. Last he heard, Tiresias/Cyllene wasn't scheduled to go down until closer to the end of the month. "Perhaps you should ask General O'Neill?"

Landry snorts. "Which I would, if Jack didn't have his phone off the hook. And at ease, man, you're making me think you have something to hide." Nat settles down into textbook parade rest, still not looking at Landry; out of the corner of his eye, he can see that Landry's shuffling through papers on his desk. "Does this have anything to do with those two weeks he stole you back at the beginning of the year? And does it have anything to do with the disappearance of one Captain Spencer Griffith from my command?"

"Couldn't say, sir," Nat repeats, although this time it's another kind of answer, and he knows Landry will hear the difference: _couldn't say without permission from General O'Neill to read you into the op_. "I'm sure the General would be happy to answer your --"

"Contrary to the popular opinion of this command, Colonel," Landry says, tight and irritated, "I am _not_ an idiot."

There's not much Nat can say to that, so he settles on a completely neutral "Sir." Not agreement, not argument. He's pretty sure Landry _isn't_ an idiot -- or rather, not a _complete_ idiot; complete idiots don't get trusted with command of the most important operation in the service. But Jack had told him not to tell Landry anything, and Landry might be his direct CO, but Jack O'Neill not only outranks Landry but will always, _always_ hold a hell of a lot more of Nat's personal loyalty than this man standing before him.

"I don't like this," Landry grumps, which Nat doesn't have to say anything to, because -- really, self-evident. "And when all of this is over, believe me, we will be having words about what is and is not appropriate for members of this command to withhold from the General who signs your orders. I'm scrubbing your mission to XC2. Go put together a bag and get someone else from your team to drive you over to Peterson as quickly as possible; there's a flight on standby. And no, before you ask, I have no idea how long Jack is going to keep you for."

"Sir," Nat says, and takes it as a dismissal; he turns on his heel and escapes before Landry can grump at him some more. 

Dave Baker is the first member of SG-3 that Nat runs into in the gear-up room. "Hey, sir," Baker says. "I wanted to -- hey, that isn't your mission gear."

"Nope," Nat says. "Mission's scrubbed. General O'Neill wants me in DC for something. Guess you guys will have to wipe your own asses for a while."

He doesn't have to say anything else; Baker's an SGC vet, four and a half years on the line and hasn't shown any signs of cracking, and he remembers Jack's command just as fondly as everyone else does. Baker whistles, low and tight. "Big?" he asks.

Nat makes himself shrug. "For all I know, he just can't find a fourth for bridge," he says, and Baker hears it as the warning he means it to be. "Need you to give me a lift over to Peterson, if you can take the time out of your busy social calendar."

"Sure thing," Baker says. "Lemme give you a hand with your shit."

Baker doesn't say anything else until they're halfway to Peterson, and even then it's low-key. "You need any help with anything?" he asks. "You just say the word and we'd all come running. Especially if it's for General O'Neill."

Nat knows, and to be completely honest, the fact disturbs him, just a little. He's known Jack O'Neill for years, on the personal and the professional level, and he knows Jack would be the first to decry the kind of hero-worship that some of the men regard him with; Jack knows that command has to rest in the office, not in the person, and Jack's always been vaguely uncomfortable with the cult-of-personality worship that he seems to attract. 

But Nat also knows that the SGC is a command unlike any other he's ever served in, and he knows that a lot of the veterans are uncomfortable with Landry as a commanding officer. They accepted Hammond because nobody could doubt, not for an instant, that George Hammond (and damn, but Nat misses the man) had the best interests of everyone on base at heart, from the Gate Team leaders all the way on down to the guy mopping the floors on level 14. They accepted Jack, because Jack knew who they were, what they wanted, and what made them tick, and everyone knew that Jack had been there, done that, just like they had. Landry's been in command of the SGC for over two years now, and he came in from the outside without a single clue about what serving at the SGC is like, and everyone's still tiptoeing around waiting for him to crack under the pressure, because they've given up on waiting for him to have an epiphany. 

If anyone asked Nat, not that they do, he'd say that Landry should have spent a week or two on a Gate team getting his ass shot at halfway across the galaxy on a planet with a red sun and purple grass before he could ever hope to give an order to the men and women who _do_ every day, as part of their jobs, and have it obeyed instantly and without question. The people of the SGC will forgive a lot in a commander when they're certain that commander knows where they're coming from. He's never gotten so much as a hint that Landry views the other side of the Gate as anything other than a tour of duty anywhere on this world -- and not even the unpleasant ones.

But that's for later -- he's mentioned it to Jack a few times, here and there, and Jack keeps making faces like he's just bit into a lemon and muttering about how he knows, he knows -- and Baker's watching him for an answer. "I'll pass on the message," Nat says. "In the meantime, eyes on the road."

Major Davis is waiting for him on the other end of the flight, which is only an hour and a half -- there are advantages to borrowing one of the F-15s -- and it's the first time Nat's ever seen the man look anything other than perfectly put-together; his tie is sloppy, like he's been pulling at it, and he looks exhausted around the edges. He's holding two extra-large cups of coffee; he hands one over to Nat, and then salutes. Nat returns it. It always feels weird when he leaves the more freewheeling manners of the SGC, where salutes only happen when Landry's standing on ceremony again. "Morning, sir," Davis says. "Good to see you again."

"You too, Major," Nat says, peeling back the lid and inspecting the coffee; it looks like it's done up exactly how he takes it, which makes him wonder if his preferences are noted down in a file somewhere or if Davis really does just have that good a memory. "What's the news?"

"General O'Neill is catching some downtime," Davis says. "Let me take over to the building we're using for HQ; I'll brief you on the way. We're going to be at this for a while." 

 

**\+ 19 hours**

The sound of the phone ringing wakes Sam up; it takes her a few seconds of groping at the nightstand where her sleep-fogged brain insists that the phone is (which it is, in her house, but this isn't her house) before she realizes where she is, what's going on, and who the weight on the other side of the bed is (no longer cradling her, but he's lying face-down with his ankle twined with hers). The noise Jack makes as he reaches for the phone is the sound of a man who was not ready to wake up yet. She can sympathize.

"O'Neill," he says, stifling a yawn. Sam buries her face in the pillow; the phone ringing almost always means that it's time to get up and hit the ground running, so she'll take the last few seconds she can steal. "Yeah," Jack says, after a minute. "Okay, good. Let him have whatsisface. O'Canlon. And tell him he doesn't have to be all that gentle about asking." Pause. "Shit. Yeah, okay. So, take him over to Hayes, get him sworn, _then_ let him have O'Canlon. Hell, I'll probably be there by then, anyway. I just need to throw my ass in the shower, grab something to eat, and then I'll be over. I'll grab Carter, too." Pause. "Yeah, sounds good. Actually, have one of the MPs that we already cleared take him over to Bolling. You, I want to catch at least four hours of sleep before I see you again. I mean it." 

Jack hangs up the phone, and then rolls over (she thinks) to face her again. She's just wondering if maybe she should do something or say something when his hand falls on her shoulder, sweeping lightly down her arm, then back up and continuing down her back. "I hate to say it," he says.

Sam makes a noise that she knows he'll have no problem interpreting as _I'm awake and I don't really want to be_. He laughs. "Yeah, I know," he says. "Come on. I'll start the coffee. Reynolds just got here. We need to be out the door in fifteen minutes or so; plan accordingly."

She sits up, dragging her legs over the edge of the bed and running a hand through her hair. She wasn't asleep long enough for her mouth to taste as bad as it could, but she still desperately needs to brush her teeth. She yawns again. "'Kay," she says. "Ugh. Morning."

"Afternoon by now, I think," Jack says (and she will never in a million years cease to hate how _awake_ he is within two minutes of his eyes opening; she and Daniel had always despised him for it, when it wasn't saving their lives). He runs his hand along her shoulder again, this time more tentatively, as though he's trying to see what he should be doing, how they should be interacting. She brings her hand up to squeeze his, briefly, and then hauls her sorry ass out of bed and into the bathroom.

Her hair's a fright, dried every which way, and there's no way she can tame it by just dunking it in the sink, so she makes a face at herself in the mirror (at least Jack has seen her with morning hair before), brushes her teeth, and throws herself in the shower for a quick scrub-down. She's just rinsing off the soap when Jack knocks on the door. "Okay if I come in?" he calls through.

For a minute she's tempted to say no, because this should be weird, but the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes it isn't weird at all. It's just them, and if they're in his house instead of in a VIP suite or a campsite halfway across the galaxy and if they're two instead of four, well, it doesn't change things much. "Yeah," she calls back, and through the tiny holes of the shower-curtain, she can see him coming in with mug in hand.

She snaps off the water as he's soaping up his face to shave, reaching out for the towel hanging on a hook next to the shower, and he turns and puts it in her questing hand before she has to ask for it. "Brought you coffee," he says, gesturing to where he'd left it on the back of the toilet tank, as she's toweling her hair and herself dry and then wrapping herself in the towel to step out. "We can hit the Dunkin' Donuts drivethrough on the way to grab something that can pass for food, but I figured you'd want the coffee first."

His face is half-covered with shaving cream, and he looks impossibly weary, like he'd really rather just climb back in bed and sleep the whole day away, and there's a small nick along his jawline that's produced two or three drops of blood, no more. She transfers her grip on the towel to one-handed and lifts her hand to thumb away the blood. His eyebrows draw together, a question unasked, and she says, "You cut yourself."

Jack's face eases, and he smiles a little. "Good morning," he says.

"Good morning," she says, and means it, because for the first time, she's starting to believe that it really can be this simple.

For a second she wants to kiss him -- a repeat of last night's promise, a renewal of the unspoken agreement that yes, they _are_ doing this, that they _will_ try, that once the immediate crisis has receded (not ended -- somehow, she thinks, it won't ever _end_ , but there'll be a time when they both aren't running full-out) they will take the time and work out what this is, what this can be, what they can be for each other. But he's covered in shaving cream, and now isn't the time. She brushes her fingertips against his lips instead, and is rewarded by a deepening of his smile, and then she takes the mug of coffee he brought for her, and she goes to get dressed so they can get moving.

 

**\+ 21 hours**

Spence isn't expecting to sleep the night straight through, especially after what JD had said, but he's out cold by 2100 and the next time he catches himself stirring it's 1100. He wakes quickly and cleanly, unconscious one minute and sitting straight up in bed the next, and the way his heart is pounding tells him he was dreaming but he shies away from remembering what it was. He's sweating and shivering all at once, and the inside of his chest feels bruised and battered even though he knows he's fine ( _fine_ , dammit, _fine_ ), but his knees are steady when he climbs out of bed.

The shower last night hadn't bothered him. Or, to be scrupulously exact, the shower last night hadn't bothered him any more than everything _else_ had been bothering him, but this morning he sticks his hand underneath the spray to test the temperature and --

>   
>  _oh God it hurts it hurts it hurts so fucking_ much _and he can't let it break him, can't let it_ stop _him, because JD needs him to fucking finish this and he isn't done yet and he's dead, he has to be, he_ knows _that the shock will kill him if the damage doesn't, but if he just gives up and lies down now he won't just be killing himself, he'll be killing JD and he_ will not do that _and_ our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name --
> 
> I've got you, _and it's JD's voice in the darkness,_ thy kingdom come thy will be done _and he's trying to hold on to what JD's saying to him, clinging to the knowledge that JD is here, JD has made it, he can stop fighting now, except now JD has to worry about him and he's going to be dead weight the whole way out (_ forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those _) and he won't, can't let it happen that way, and then JD is making him tilt his head back and there's a shower of water on his face which is burning which is melting away like cotton candy in the rain and it_ hurts, _the water isn't helping at all, and he's going to have to make JD understand that it's important that_ one _of them get out of this to carry the message back and oh please God he doesn't want to die alone --_  
> 

He comes out of it when he cracks his head against the frame of the bathroom door, scrabbling backwards, _away_ , and the floor is soaking wet with the water spraying out of the shower. Which is probably why he slipped. 

"Fuck," he says, and his voice sounds loud in the room, and he fixes his eyes on the dingy off-white of the tile and the puddle of water creeping across the floor (not darkness, not blankness, his eyes are working _perfectly fucking fine dammit_ ). "Okay. Come on, Griffith. Into the water. You stink." 

He manages it by standing outside the bathtub and sticking one body part in at a time, staring firmly and fiercely at whatever he's washing, not looking to the left or to the right, and when he's finished, it takes all the towels in the bathroom to mop up the overflow. He stares at his reflection in the mirror ( _wrong_ , and he wonders how long it's going to be, wonders if he's ever going to start looking like himself again) and decides that shaving is a little outside of his current capabilities. Even _if_ he's headed to DC to report to General O'Neill. They can damn well deal with a little bit of five o'clock shadow.

( _I'm putting you on a plane at fifteen hundred,_ JD had said, like he has the right to give orders, the right to make decisions, and Spence knows that he will never again be able to look at JD and see nothing more than his cousin's teenaged lover, because there are men and women he's served under who look straight at you and you _know_ they were born to command, know that they would be commanders for the rest of their lives even if they had no troops to follow them, and he's known JD was one of them for a long damn time but for a while he'd managed to forget. He won't forget again.)

The knock comes on his door just as the clock is ticking over to 1145, just when JD had promised it would. Spence opens the door and squints. (Bright and sunny out there. Not a raincloud in the sky.) It takes his eyes longer to adjust than it should. JD looks tired, like he hasn't slept at all, like everything he's done and had to do is finally catching up with him and weighing him down.

"Hey," JD says, calm and quiet, no hint of judgement in his voice or eyes. "You sleep okay?"

Spence clears his throat. "Okay enough," he says. "Didn't keep waking up, at least." 

JD steps into the room. He has a backpack slung on his shoulder, which he hadn't had yesterday; it's cheap and plastic and full of zippers and mesh and bungees, the kind that people who never go outdoors buy so that they can feel like genuine hikers, and it looks like it's stuffed full. He's wearing a pair of jeans and a white tank top. Spence has never seen him in anything but a long-sleeved black t-shirt before, and this must be why: his arms and shoulders and chest are covered in tattoos, dark and dense, breathtaking. Spence tries not to stare. He doesn't know why JD has hidden them over the past two years and he doesn't know why he's showing them now, but if there's one thing he's figured out by now, it's that JD doesn't like answering questions.

"This is yours," JD says, shoving the backpack at Spence. "I went out shopping again last night. If I'm not mistaken, you're going to be in DC for a while, and you're going to want some stuff of your own. I somehow don't think you're going to want to go out shopping for yourself for a while, and I'm sure O'Neill will have people who can do it for you, but this way they won't have to. There's a laptop in there. Make sure you don't let anyone but O'Neill touch it. And I mean _anyone_."

"Thanks," Spence says. He takes the backpack; for a second he doesn't know what to do with it, do with his hands, so he just hangs it awkwardly off one shoulder. "And I will. I mean, I won't. Do you, uh, do you have any idea what I'm going to be doing next?"

"If O'Neill's not an idiot, he'll keep you on the task force for cleaning this mess up," JD says. "And O'Neill's not an idiot." He crosses the room, opens the bathroom door. Spence winces. The towels are still on the floor; they'll tell the tale of his momentary freakout more clearly than if he tried to explain it in words. "Come on," JD says, turning back, a hint of brisk impatience showing in his voice. "We have to be out of here in fifteen minutes."

Spence has no idea what JD wants, but he drops the backpack on the bed and follows JD across the room anyway. JD turns on the water in the sink with a snap of one wrist and points at the toilet. "Sit," he says. 

Spence does. It's only when JD wets a washcloth and picks up the can of shaving cream that he realizes what JD means to do, and he opens his mouth to protest. JD pins him with knowing eyes. "It's all right," he says, curiously gentle, completely free of blame. "I'm pretty impressed you managed to make it into the shower. You'll feel better with a clean shave. Trust me on this one."

When JD says it, Spence is suddenly aware of the way his cheeks itch, the way that itching transforms itself in the back of his head into _something wrong_ , and he bites his lip. "I can do it," he says. 

"No," JD says, still in that same tone of honest understanding, and Spence shivers, because in that one second, he can see not only the commander JD used to be, but the man his cousin loves so fiercely, the man who went out and faced down insanity every day for the better part of a decade, the man who _knows_ what it's like to have to learn to live with damage. "You really can't. Not yet. And that's all right, and it's going to keep being all right, for at least a little while. With shit like this, there are things you have to force yourself through and things that you can go ahead and let other people deal with for you until you can deal with them yourself. And if you don't let it be all right, that'll break you too."

He cups Spence's chin with one hand, stroking the wet washcloth over Spence's cheeks, and Spence keeps his eyes open and his breathing even and listens to JD talk. "And it'll be the craziest fucking things, too. For three months once I couldn't put the milk in my own coffee, so I learned to take it black. Took me forever to break the habit. For, oh, about a year or so, I had to carry twice as much ammo as I thought anyone could possibly need, or I'd flip out and panic. For six months, the only person I could stand to let cut my hair was D -- one of my team. Keep your eyes open, when you get back to the SGC. You'll start to see it."

"Major Benton won't go into the armory without someone there with him," Spence says, quietly.

JD picks up the shaving cream. "Foothold. Fourth year? Third year? I've forgotten. Anyone who's been there long enough picks up a few quirks. Anyone who's been there long enough is gonna take care of yours, because they know you're gonna turn around and do the same." The shaving cream is cold, and it smells like nothing at all, and Spence makes himself keep breathing, because it's only fucking shaving cream and it's not going to fucking do anything to him. "That's when you know that you're really part of the project, and not just someone who's wandering through."

"They gave us the loss rate figures in GT &O," Spence says. He can feel the foam moving on his cheeks as he talks. "Eighteen to twenty-four months."

"They weren't lying," JD says, and in his voice is a whole sea of regret. "Tip your head back. Keep your eyes on mine. We'll do this quickly, but I don't want to nick you. And you really will feel better after."

And JD was right; he does, even though there are a few minutes (razor traveling over the planes of his cheeks, over his chin, down his throat) where he almost panics, where he has to hold his eyes on JD's and breathe, breathe, _breathe_. But when it's over, and JD is wiping the last bits of the shaving cream from his face with the washcloth, Spence thinks _that wasn't so bad; maybe I can get through this after all._

"Thanks," he says, when it's all over and JD is rinsing out the razor one last time. JD looks up, meeting Spence's eyes in the mirror, and for a second, Spence shudders, because JD looks nothing like himself. Mirrors lie. Mirrors are going to be lying to him for a long damn time.

"You're welcome," JD says. "You're going to get through this. It won't seem like it for a while. But you are going to get through this." He pauses. "When you show up in DC, ask O'Neill to have Skipper pulled back from Atlantis. O'Neill can use you both, you work together better than you work apart, and ... it'll help."

Oh, God, it really would help to have Skipper there with him (a flash, a screaming, _oh God please don't let me die alone_ , and he batters away the memories; not now, not here). "I'm kinda _persona non grata_ in the family right now," he says. Not that he thinks Skipper will believe it, but he doesn't want Skipper in the middle.

JD shakes his head. "Won't last long. If O'Neill hasn't gotten Hayes to call your parents and clear you yet, it's only because he's up to his ass in alligators and they've all been trying to bail out the swamp. He'll remember soon enough. I'd be surprised if he hadn't by the time you show up. We don't leave our people behind. And we don't fuck them over, either." He chucks the disposable razor and the shaving cream into the bathroom's trash can, and Spence tries not to wonder at the familiar way with which JD refers to the President. "Come on," JD says, and with that he's back to being closed-off, tightly-guarded, brisk. "I don't want to get charged for a second day in this rat-trap."

Spence can see the briskness now for what it is: JD's own defense mechanism, honed over years and years, and in that moment, he starts to understand what JD meant about accomodating quirks and defenses. JD shaved his face for him, because he couldn't. He won't take offense at JD's prickliness, because it's necessary. Just a thing. He can do that. 

"If anybody asks," Spence says, as they're locking up the room behind them and heading to the office to turn in their keycards, "where should I tell them you've gone?"

Not _where are you going_. With those words, he's promising JD that he'll lie for him if he has to, that he'll keep the faith and spout the company line, and it's (probably) not something he would have done before, but he's not the same person he was two months ago, and he never will be again. And he's all right with that. He has to be. He doesn't have any other choice.

JD pauses, his hand on the doorknob of the motel office, squinting against the sun. "Tell them I'm off figuring out how to go back to my own life," he says, and that's the last Spence can get out of him. 

 

**\+ 24 hours**

When Theo shows up at the house, she's expecting what she's been getting for pretty much the past few months -- AJ screaming his head off, Cam trying to hold it together with every last bit of strength left in him -- but what she _gets_ is almost enough to make her back up and check that she has the right house. She lets herself in the front door (she has a key and the security code now, for days when she might need it) to the sound of Bruce Springsteen playing so loud that she couldn't be heard if she shouted over it to figure out where Cam and the baby are. It's all right, though, because she can _also_ hear the sound of someone singing in the kitchen, and it isn't her, so, well, it's gotta be Cam, and he sounds --

He sounds _happy_. 

She follows the sound of music, listening to Cam's voice (and it's a pretty good voice, too) belting out "well, I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk", and she finds that she's smiling already, like his good mood is contagious, like he's managing to imbue the entire house with whatever impulse has prompted him to turn the music high. When she sticks her head in the kitchen, AJ is sitting in a babyseat on the counter banging his hand on the plastic frame and gurgling along happily, and Cam has the oversized cutting board on the counter and what looks to be half a _gallon_ of strawberries spread over it, half of them already trimmed and sliced and piled to the side. He's not quite _dancing_ \-- she knows enough about his injuries now to know that he'll probably never dance again -- but his motions as he quarters the strawberry beneath his knife have the extra flourish of joy in motion. 

It's beautiful.

He looks up -- at some noise, at some motion -- and when he sees her, the smile that spreads over his face is just as beautiful. "Hey!" he yells, and as she watches, bemused, he grabs the kitchen towel tucked into his waistband, dries the strawberry juice from his hands, and reaches over to turn off the music. It seems to echo in the space once he has. "Didn't realize it was so late already. I tried calling you to say I was gonna skip PT today, but you didn't answer at the office and your cell phone went straight to voicemail."

"Oh, _crap_ ," Theo says, reaching for her back pocket, where she usually keeps her cell phone, and discovering that it's off. "The ringer's still stuck on full and I haven't had a chance to stop in at the store and replace the phone yet, and I was in the library this afternoon and I forgot to turn it back on, and I guess --" She runs out of words and flaps her hands, knowing he'll know what she means. She likes him because he's never once made her feel like an idiot when she's going through an attack of babbling or scatterbrainedness again. 

"S'fine by me," Cam says. He picks up the strawberry he's slicing and holds it out to her; she takes it and pops it into her mouth. Just tart enough; she'll bet it's never seen the inside of a storage warehouse in its life. "It's not like I mind the company. Just thought I'd let you know that you could bail today if you had to without leaving me high and dry." He grins at her a little more. The corners of his eyes crinkle when he's smiling like that, Theo notices. It's not at all like the crinkle around his eyes when he's trying to keep from showing pain. "An' believe me, I'm gonna hear about skipping PT from now until the end of days, but I figure: a guy can't take a day off to celebrate, what's the world coming to."

"Oh!" Theo says. "What are we celebrating?" 

AJ catches sight of her and launches into a stream of the nonsense syllables he's _mostly_ replaced his screaming with. (He is merely trying, she thinks, to inform the world around him about whatever issue is vital to his worldview at any given time, and now that he can mostly command his tongue to do what he wants it to do, the screaming isn't as necessary.) She crosses the kitchen and scoops him up out of the baby seat. "Really?" she asks him, with as much dignity as she can manage, and is rewarded with another spate of babble. 

"Sunrise," Cam says, and for a second she can't follow him, until she realizes it's an answer to the question she'd asked him, and it doesn't really answer anything at all. She turns. He's still grinning at her. "C'mon. We got tarts to make. You wanna stick around, you can even help eat 'em."


	2. one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I had me a vision; I was a fireman in a time of fires, and I was paralyzed. A robot heart for a theme park world, whatever keeps us alive, whatever keeps claim to us being civilized..._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> JD's tired of walking around with his hand on his gun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/286005.html) 2008-12-04.)
> 
> Summary quote from Matthew Goode's "Sort of a Protest Song".

_One thing they got wrong. There's no such thing as right action and wrong action. There's only this:_

_What can you live with afterwards?_

*

The paper-trip O'Neill sent for him is going to be good for at least a few more months -- he knows O'Neill wouldn't cancel or reassign the identity without giving him a warning shot across the bow first -- but he doesn't use it to book a flight back. No practical reason he shouldn't; what O'Neill sent him is guaranteed solid enough to stand up to any TSA scrutiny, the identity one that exists cleanly in databases all over the world with suitable personal history so no one looking at it would make it as a cover. When O'Neill activated it and assigned it to him, all the appropriate changes would have been made so that fingerprints (and probably even DNA) would match. He could fly on Jesse Davidson's ID and never have to worry for even a second about any of the details; the photo is even his own.

He leaves the monastery on foot anyway, despite Keller- _roshi_ offering to call him a cab or give him a ride. So much of this has been about retracing the steps he took to get here. So it's shank's mare to the Greyhound station, Greyhound to downtown Austin, two days to stare out the window and watch the country go by, and with every step he takes and every mile that moves from before him to behind him it's like the siren's-song gets louder in his ears: _home_. 

Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill; Austin in mid-July is hot and sticky and miserable and he's soaked through with sweat before he's even out of the Greyhound terminal, but his serenity doesn't crack much. (Thank fuck.) He tells the cab to drop him at the top of the cul-de-sac. Walking down the street gives him enough time to brace himself. The last final bits of decompression. The Parkinson kids are out in the yard playing when he passes their house. The older girl goes running into the house when she sees him, presumably to deliver the news.

Breathe.

Lost the keys somewhere along the way, left them back in a bedroom in Black Mountain along with his ID and his history and all the pieces of himself he couldn't bring along for the ride. So he knocks. Knows Mitchell's at home; the car is in the driveway. (Baby seat in the back of it. And then they were three. Mitchell had told him about the change of plans when he'd called from that motel in Portland; he is neither surprised nor upset, though it's going to take some rearranging.) It takes a long time before he can hear the scrape and shift of the locks being undone, and he tries not to let the wait disrupt his inner peace.

Then Mitchell's opening the door, and any thought of inner peace is gone, because it's _Mitchell_.

"Oh my God," Mitchell says, fierce and awestruck, clutching at the frame of the door. "You _fucker_ , you didn't warn me." Looks like he wants to lunge forward, wrap him up in those big strong arms, but the impulse shows as nothing more than a slight quivering of the shoulders. Giving him room. Giving him space. Letting _him_ decide the terms of their reunion, being careful (so careful) not to trigger something that shouldn't be tripped. Just another reason why he loves the man so fiercely.

He's been thinking about this moment since the moment he could let himself, wondering how the pageant would play out, everything from throwing himself in Mitchell's arms (on Mitchell's mercy) to the merest sight dissolving the bounds and boundaries of all the work he's done to the inside of his own head, making it all come crashing in on him. The reality is somewhere in between. His skin's aching for Mitchell's touch, like a plant dying of dehydration in the desert, but the thought of leaning into it makes his mouth dry and his chest ache. (Better than it would have been if he'd come straight home. He was right, so right, to take the time first. He hopes like fuck Mitchell will understand.)

"Hey," he says, finally, when the silence grows too heavy. (What now?) "I'm sorry I took so long."

"Don't be an idiot," Mitchell says, immediately. "Have you eaten? Of course you haven't eaten. You look like you've been on the road for days. C'mon."

Mitchell steps back. Holds the door open. Takes him a minute to take the first step over the threshold, Inanna descending into the underworld, not to give up his identity but to reclaim it, piece by piece. Then the backpack is on the tile floor and he's pressed up against Mitchell's chest, pushing him back against the hallway's wall, Mitchell stumbling with the unexpected weight and nearly falling over. The one time he's ever been careless with Mitchell's limitations; the one time he's ever moved around Mitchell without carefully planning and telegraphing his trajectory inside Mitchell's orbit. Didn't know he was going to do it until he moved. 

But Mitchell might stumble, but he doesn't fall. Bears up under the weight, every last bit of it, and it's awkward and it's halting and he can't figure out if he's craving the touch or if he wants to flee from it, but it's Mitchell. It's _home_. Their home; their life. Together. 

Mitchell smells like sunshine and baking bread and a little bit like fresh clean baby skin. Seems willing to hold on as long as he needs, to let him hold on in return, to let him set the pace and the progress and all the bits and pieces. Should have fucking known. There's nothing Mitchell doesn't know about him by now, nothing Mitchell can't intuit about what he's had to do and what he's had to be and what he's had to go through. He's spent the last seven months making himself into a monster and then trying to find the route to journey home through it. Mitchell's spent the last seven months trying to steel himself to face it when it happens. 

He's pretty sure that no matter what Mitchell's been fearing, what he's actually had to do, actually had to be, is worse.

Eventually he realizes that Mitchell's hands are moving up and down his back, slow and gentle, cautiously providing him the lifeline of _touch_ , and realizing it makes him also realize that he's not shying away from it. Just another confirmation that he was smart to take the detour. If Mitchell had touched him before he'd had a chance to forget the snake's weight, he'd have flinched and shivered and Mitchell would have _known_. "Shh," Mitchell is saying, and it seems odd, until he realizes that he's breathing harshly: not quite sobs, but nearly there. "It's okay. It's okay. I got you. I got you, and I'm not letting go."

"God," is all he can say, his voice heavy in his own ears. "God. I don't -- I can't --"

"I know." Mitchell gives him the little shoulder-twitch that means 'off now', and he steps back, not quite looking Mitchell in the eyes. Mitchell stoops to pick up the cane he'd let fall to the ground; he checks himself before he reaches for it. Awkward. Not quite sure, yet, what his role in this dance is anymore. "Come on," Mitchell adds, firm and unyielding. "You really do look like shit. Let's get some food in you, and then we can go to bed."

"I have to tell you," he says, before he can let it all build up in his head, before it can turn into a weight in his throat and on his tongue that he can't speak past. "I have to tell you everything that happened."

Mitchell doesn't flinch. Not at all, not where he can see, at least, just sets cane to floor and limps down the hallway. "Yeah, you do," he says, over his shoulder. "But not in the hallway. And not until you get a chance to sit down, eat something, and absorb the fact that you're home."

_Home_.

It really is. He'd been worried that it wouldn't be.

AJ is sitting in a baby-seat on the counter. He crosses the kitchen on light feet to come and greet the baby, and AJ eyes him with a certain amount of trepidation for half a second before a sunshine baby smile spreads across that innocent face and he finds himself being treated to a recitation of baby babble (still so fucking familiar, despite the long years, despite all the things he's tried to forget). When he turns away, Mitchell's looking at him. 

"He missed you," Mitchell says, his eyes neutral, his face controlled. There's an undercurrent behind it, though, grave and honest: _so did I_.

He makes himself smile. Makes himself remember how to smile. He's spent the past five weeks in meditation with Keller- _roshi_ and the current crop of postulants, on his knees and inside his head, and most of it was done to dismantle the roles he'd forced himself to learn how to play. Less of the time had been taken up with remembering who he was behind those roles, because he's been playing roles for too damn long and if he'd thought of his _self_ as a role he had to assume in return, he'd have fucked it as cleanly as if he'd never done the work at all. He knows it was the right decision to make. It doesn't stop him from feeling like he's left with nothing, slate washed clean, an empty vessel that needs re-filling. If he'd taken more time, he could have (maybe) overcome it. But he hadn't wanted to wait any longer.

"I missed you, too," he says, tight and in control, not yet willing to start the conversation they're going to have to have. "When I -- When I could let myself. I couldn't always. Too dangerous, otherwise."

Mitchell opens the freezer and takes a Tupperware container out of it. "I know," he says: still calm, still controlled. "O'Neill passed on your message. I knew what you meant by it. I were you, I'd have blocked the whole thing out, the whole way."

"I did," he says. It's important to be honest. He's given Mitchell a series of promises, in word and in deed, that he will never bring anything to their bed, to their life together, other than full and complete disclosure. It's important to reiterate those promises now. Start as you mean to go on, Mitchell's always said, and this moment, this conversation, is a re-starting, a renewal, as much as it is a return. _With this truth, I thee wed._ No boundaries. No barriers. "I told myself the whole way that I couldn't afford to think about you, because if I did, I wouldn't be able to pull it off. But I couldn't stop thinking of you anyway."

The contents of the Tupperware (looks like lasagna) go onto a plate; the plate goes into the microwave. "I thought about you too," Mitchell says, quietly. "Every damn day." Turns around, and in the studied blankness of Mitchell's face he can see the lines and stresses that the last seven months have etched upon that beloved countenance. "Let's never do that again, okay?"

He closes his eyes against the relief he feels, because it's a promise as much as the promise he's been trying to put into every single word he's spoken since he walked back into this house, a confirmation that Mitchell hasn't changed his mind, a quiet reaffirmation of their commitment to each other. A quiet reaffirmation that they _are_ a them, that there will be a future, that everything is going to be all right. 

Doesn't mean it's going to be easy. Just that it's going to be _possible_. 

"Yeah," he says, to the blackness behind his eyelids, to the kitchen they painted together, to the house that is _theirs_ and the man who is his everything, the man he never thought he'd find and still can't quite believe he has. "Not gonna promise, because promises have a way of convincing the universe to conspire to make you break them --" True, too true, and he's done a fuck of a lot of work to come to terms with all of his broken vows and it still hasn't helped. He's going to be agonizing over those for a while. "But --"

His voice breaks. He can _hear_ his voice breaking, hear the control cracking and falling to pieces, and he feels fragile and empty and one step away from falling apart, and it doesn't matter. He _can_ break now, if he needs to. There's someone else there to hold him. 

It's _over_. Finally. In a way he hasn't let himself believe right up until this very second. Over and done, stick a fucking fork in it, mission complete, time to hang up his spurs and sword. _Finished_. Punctuate the sentence. Turn the page. Start another chapter.

Start again.

He takes a deep breath. Another. The microwave dings. He doesn't hear Mitchell moving; his sense of the room (still a part of him on high sentry, mapping the other people in his space, mapping the energies of who's where and whether or not they're looking at him, whether or not he's still on stage) tells him that Mitchell's leaning against the counter, watching him carefully, trying to decide what to do next.

"I don't ever want to go through that again either," he finally says, and the whole of his agony must show in his voice, because Mitchell makes a small noise of empathy (not sympathy, not ever sympathy) even as the microwave dings its I'm-finished reminder again.

"We're still good," Mitchell says, soft and reassuring, slicing straight through his fears and his worst-case scenario disaster planning to pin right down to the heart of it. "I love you. Doesn't matter what happened. Doesn't matter what you went through, or what you had to do, or what you might be worried about right now. I love you. That's not gonna change. Ever."

"I know," he says, and he opens his eyes, and Mitchell's still fucking there. Watching. Waiting. Looking for some cue as to what he needs, looking for some cue about what Mitchell can give, looking for some hint or clue about what the right action, the mindful action, would be. So he makes himself smile again, knowing Mitchell's going to be able to read it as forced, not being able to do much about it. 

Mitchell suspects most of it, he knows. What he's had to be. What he's had to become. All the ways in which his hands are cracked and stained, yet again. And Mitchell's still standing there, looking at him, more worried about him than he is about himself, ready to do or be anything he needs in order to _make this better_. All he can do is pray that when he tells Mitchell all of it, that acceptance isn't going to change.

He'd said to Carter -- speaking of O'Neill, speaking of himself -- that the one thing O'Neill wants more than anything else in this world or any other is someone who can see all the bits and pieces of him, _accept_ all the bits and pieces of him, take all the pieces of horror and madness and shame that he's spent so long trying to ignore and face them clear and plain in the light of day. Sara never had. He'd loved his wife, for all that their relationship had always been strained and uncertain (his fault, not hers; he'd never been willing to admit what he'd really wanted, accept who he really was, and first he'd blamed himself and then he'd blamed her and now he's willing to admit that the truth lies somewhere between), but their life together had always been built on a tissue of lies. 

He'd lied to her (wordlessly, in thought and in deed) by telling her that he was all right, that he was whole and unscarred, that he could leave his job behind him and come home to her with a clean conscience. She'd lied to him by telling him she was all right with the pieces of the lies she'd been able to intuit, the glimpses of his work he couldn't leave behind him, the silences and the absences and all the scars he couldn't help but show. She'd tried not to let it grow between them. It had anyway. He'd seen it happening, and he'd never been able to find the words to fix it, the strength to lift the veil entirely, to show her that truth was both easier and harder than whatever frenzied horror she'd built inside her mind in the depths of those long nights alone. 

He's not going to make the same mistake twice.

So he turns and sits at the kitchen table, the table he'd built with his own two hands, and Mitchell takes the plate of lasagna out of the microwave and puts it in front of him, and Mitchell doesn't have to glare at him to eat, because he's known for a while that Mitchell feeds people out of love. Mitchell settles down on the other bench, across from him with a mug of coffee and an expression he can't read, and doesn't say anything. Just watches him, with a look that's half love and half trepidation, and he wonders what Mitchell's thinking, and he misses the fact that seven months ago he wouldn't have had to wonder; he would have already known.

The sun's starting to fade in the backyard, the first hints of gold giving way to russet and cinnamon, when he puts down his fork and says, without preamble, "Started out by fucking up. Ba'al's Jaffa made me on my first recon. It set the tone for the rest of it."

It's like a dam breaking, like water spilling over the levees, because once he starts talking, he can't stop. He tells Mitchell all of it. Everything. From the very first moment when Ba'al had challenged him to seal their bargain with his body, through the afternoons and evenings spent with the team of Wunderkinder and the growing affection, attraction, he'd felt for Virta, through to Manhattan and the way he'd felt (and not felt) standing outside Clancy's hotel room with a glass in his hand and a plan in his head. The terror of finding out that the snake was _the snakes_. The moment when one of them had come clean, made its offer and stepped back to see what he'd do. A conversation in a kitchen, blows traded, decisions made. The discovery of betrayal, and alliances built out of it, and the endless hesitation and thought-chasing he'd had to submerge himself into in order to step through all the swirling possibilities to find the one course of right action lying beneath.

(The memories. The dreams. The slow and creaking horror of feeling his mind unspooling beneath him, the knowledge that he dared not crack. The fierce focus he'd brought to bear on the problem. All the ways in which he'd closed off all thoughts he could not afford to let shine through.)

He keeps his voice dispassionate, talks to his hands, folded on top of the table in a _mudra_ of meditation, and he does not look up to see what Mitchell's face is communicating. Mitchell's listening, he knows. That fierce and uncompromising posture of concentration, paying him the compliment of not interrupting, not prompting, not questioning. Just listening. Absorbing. Not thinking or judging; not yet. Just listening.

Eventually, he nears the end of his recitation (a sad tale's best for winter, but sometimes he thinks he'll never be cold again), and he takes a deep breath and he tells Mitchell a little story of death and acid and eyes, and he isn't imagining the sound Mitchell makes, the indrawn breath, when he tells Mitchell that the sarcophagus isn't there anymore.

He makes no apology. No explanation. There's no justification he can give; either Mitchell will know why he did it or Mitchell won't, and laying out his thoughts and his rationalization won't do anything to hasten or delay the inevitable. He's pretty sure Griffith's briefed Mitchell on this part of things already anyway. He would have, if he were Griffith. 

The sun's faded entirely. They've been sitting there for hours; AJ's fallen asleep in his baby-seat on the counter, and Mitchell's coffee is long gone. The table is bathed in the warm glow of the chandelier -- Mitchell's choice; he'd hated it at first, but it suits the room -- and the outside floodlights, on a timer he'd wired himself, clicked on long ago. The grain of the wood, beneath his hands, is warm and rich. 

Oh, God, _breathe_.

"We went --" he starts, ready to move past that moment, so close to the end of the story he can _taste_ it, ready to be done and finished so Mitchell can do -- whatever Mitchell's going to do. Yell at him. Stare at him. Tell him all the ways in which he's fucked up. Something. Anything.

But Mitchell breaks his silence. Reaches across the table, closes one warm strong hand over his wrist, and the touch is what undoes him, out of everything. He looks up. Room's a little fuzzy, swimming in and out. Mitchell's looking at him. Open and wide and vast, a quiet promise of love and faith and benediction.

"Spence told me," Mitchell says. Quiet. Firm. "He told me all of it. He didn't understand any of it. It's all right. I do. Sign of faith. Sign of love. Won't pretend it wouldn't have been nice to make all of this go away, but not like that, and you know what I can and can't live with just as well as I do. Maybe even better."

He feels like something's punched him in the chest. "I didn't --"

Doesn't know how that sentence was going to end. _Didn't want to. Didn't have to. Didn't know any other way. Didn't see any other thing I could have done. Didn't want to destroy your last hope._ But Mitchell's interrupting him again, squeezing his wrist so sharply he can feel his bones grating together beneath that grip. 

"Shut up," Mitchell says, and it's love and anger all at once. All wrapped together, spilling out over the tight and taut control Mitchell's been showing him since the moment he walked back through this door, and oh, God, he's been wondering all along how Mitchell was bearing up, but there are marks and scars he's seeing now, equal to his own, that are going to take a long fucking time to fade. "You think I'm selfish enough to blame you for what you did? For any of what you did? You think I'm weak enough to want to fix _me_ at the cost of everything you sacrificed to gain?"

The words are spilling from Mitchell's lips now, and all he can do is sit and stare, pinned by the weight of Mitchell's gaze. "You made a call in the heat of the moment, and it was the _right_ fucking call, even though at that point you probably didn't even know which way was up, and you've been terrified ever since about whether or not I was going to be able to see that it was the right call, and you get back home and you don't even tell me that you're worried. You were ready to just drop that all on me and step back and wait for me to blame you, because if I blamed you out loud, well, at least it'd be out loud, and you could get all the blame out of the inside of your head and out in the open where you could start to deal with it if it were coming from someone else. Doesn't work like that. You made a choice, and it was the right fucking choice, and you're just going to have to live with that. We both will."

His chest hurts. His chest hurts, and his wristbones ache, and the room is hazy and thick with the tears he isn't going to let himself shed. "I can, you know," Mitchell winds up, back to being calm again, and it's the same stunning open _honesty_ that's always left him breathless when he encounters it. The external manifestation of all the promises he's made to himself in this new and wonderous life, and for all his vows (so easy to shatter) he knows he never would have been able to keep that one if it hadn't been for Mitchell at his heels, daring him to keep up. "Live with it, I mean. All of it. I know you, you been spending the last month at least and probably the whole six months before that terrified that you'd get here and tell me everything you had to do and I'd decide that was one step too far. Either now, or later, somewhere on down the line in the middle of the night when it all sinks in. And I know where that fear came from, and I'm telling you right now. Not gonna happen. You're stuck with me."

He doesn't remember moving. Doesn't think about moving, consciously, unconsciously, but the next thing he knows, the floor is hard beneath his knees and he's wedged himself against the side of Mitchell's side of the booth, his forehead against Mitchell's thigh, Mitchell's hands strong against the back of his head. His chest is heaving. His eyes are burning. His throat is tight, and his head is spinning, and the rough scrape of Mitchell's jeans beneath his cheek is a sharp contrast to the tenderness with which Mitchell undoes the elastic holding back his hair and begins combing fingers through it. 

All the long hours he's spent, pulling out the insides of his mind and spreading them out across the workbench to tinker and re-form and re-shape them, staring down the truth of _what he's done_ and what he's failed to do, and this is the first time he's allowed himself to cry.

Eventually, he becomes aware that Mitchell has turned around to sit on the edge of the bench, rearranged them both so he's cradled between Mitchell's legs, face still against Mitchell's thigh, slumped sideways and weak with catharsis. Mitchell's still stroking his hair, tender and terrible. He's gotten Mitchell's jeans soaked straight through. His head hurts, and his sinuses are clogged and burning.

"Here," Mitchell says, voice soft, and passes down a napkin for him to blow his nose on. He does. Doesn't quite help, but at least now his nose isn't dripping anymore. "You go take a quick shower, clear your head a little. I'll get the Mouth into bed, and then you can finish what you gotta say and I can give you my part of things in bed where we can be more comfortable."

He sits back on his heels. Dimly, he's aware that there's a part of his mind that's trying to tell him he should be ashamed: ashamed of having those emotions, ashamed of showing them so strongly, ashamed of showing weakness. Ashamed of breaking. But there's no shame here, now, with this man. Not anymore. Maybe not ever again.

"Yeah," he says, and he takes a deep breath, and it doesn't hurt as much as it had a minute ago, so he takes another. "Yeah. Okay."

The hot water runs cold after fifteen minutes under the spray, but it doesn't matter, because he doesn't need it to last any longer.

Mitchell's waiting for him in bed when he gets out of the shower. Stripped naked, covers turned back, sitting up against the piled pillows and waiting. "Figure you're gonna have some issues about touching and being touched for a while," Mitchell says, gentle and understanding, and it's not a condemnation, but it feels like one anyway. "And we'll handle it any way you need to handle it. But --" His voice catches, just a little. Wouldn't hear it unless you were listening for it. "I need to sleep next to you tonight. I need to hold you right now. I hope --"

He stops at the side of the bed. Naked just like Mitchell's naked, and it's the first time in a long damn time that he doesn't have to worry about who might be looking, about what he might be revealing or not revealing. The bed feels like a silent accusation, like the sheets hold the impression of so many nights spent alone and wondering, and he takes a deep breath and clicks off the light and climbs in before he can worry about what else isn't being said.

"I don't deserve you," he says, into the darkness, and Mitchell makes a small strangled sound and rolls over to pull him close against that broad and sturdy chest. He breathes into the small dark pocket of shelter their position creates, resting his forehead against the planes of Mitchell's pectoral muscles, quietly marveling at the way he doesn't even flinch at the touch. (Sense-memory, rising unbidden, all the people he's had to touch and allow to touch him: Virta. Ba'al. Even Griffith, in a way, and none of them were like this, and he should have known that he'd be able to sense the difference, because his skin has always been hungry to be touched by someone who loves him.)

"I don't want to hear that," Mitchell says. "I don't want to hear you say that ever again. Nobody gets to hurt you while I'm around. Not even you."

"Yeah," he says, into the darkness, into the silence, because the two of them have always been able to communicate best skin-to-skin in the darkness where there's no visual cues to confuse them. Words are hard for him -- always have been, always will be -- but they're easier, somehow, when he doesn't have to also worry about what he's seeing, what he's showing. Not Mitchell's way, he knows. But Mitchell's willing to play along. For him. For them. 

Mitchell's hands sweep up and over the plane of his back, familiar and comforting, reading the Braille of his emotions from his skin. There's an urgency behind it, the sense of _need, want, must_ , but Mitchell's voice is clear when he says, "So let me tell you what's been going on over here while you were saving the world again."

He relaxes into it. Closes his eyes, lets Mitchell's voice fill his ears in the darkness. The animal terror in the back of his head, the fear he hadn't let himself consciously face -- that this would turn into disaster from moment one -- is starting to fade, not quickly, but quickly enough. Here in the warmth, in the darkness, Seattle is finally starting to feel far enough away. 

Doesn't mean he doesn't listen. Mitchell tells him all of it. Just as calmly as he'd given his half, but with more emotion: the tightrope-walk fear comes shining through in every word. The need to control his reactions when O'Neill and Reynolds and Barrett and Barrett's partner came calling. The silent accusations of the rest of Mitchell's family, bearing down against him constantly like the pressure that turns coal to diamond. Mitchell's realization that he couldn't stand dealing with it any longer, his need to get _away_ , go back to the home where they'd been so happy, and Cindy's tearful request that Mitchell take the baby with him, since Mitchell was the only person who could get AJ to eat or sleep. The long, endless days of trying to get some work done, trying to move their business along, so they wouldn't lose ground they couldn't afford to give up. 

Mitchell's knowledge that he was under surveillance -- their side, the other side, people who were pretending to be on their side but weren't really, doesn't matter who -- and couldn't afford a single crack in his public persona. 

"The one thing I was most terrified of," Mitchell says, hand warm on the small of his back, "was that Ba'al's people were watching, and if I didn't play it right, I'd fuck it for you." Small shudder, through Mitchell's chest, down arms and legs, quickly suppressed. "Because I knew that if they thought I was too attached to you, that would make them start wondering if _you_ were too attached to _me_ \--"

He doesn't say anything, because it's Mitchell's turn to talk and Mitchell did him the courtesy of listening to _him_ , so he's going to return it. But: yes. That was the one weak spot in the plan, the terror of _what if_ , and he'd been willing to go into it with that weakness hanging over his head because he'd been able to talk himself into believing that the snake wouldn't recognize enough of human motivators to spot something fishy, and the sheer fact the snake _hadn't_ \-- because he knows now that the snake _could have_ \-- is a bullet he hadn't let himself think about dodging. Ba'al-in-Virta should have known enough to spot it, at least. 

This far after, this far through, he can finally let himself think about what would have happened if the snake had decided to _use_ that connection, if the snake had come for Mitchell and thought to use Mitchell as a hostage against his own good behavior, if the snake had threatened Mitchell's family, if the snake had decided to command him to neutralize (such a bloodless term for such a sweeping horror; it always has been) Mitchell as a sign of loyalty --

No. Don't wonder. Don't ask yourself what you would have done. It didn't happen. If it had, he would have figured out some way around it. He has to believe that; it's the only way through.

Mitchell keeps talking, unaware of the nightmare-speculation running through his head: the times when O'Neill came calling, on the phone, in person once (and oh, that must have been _delightful_ for them both) after his first contact when O'Neill had been unwilling to trust the message even to a secured line. The call Griffith made, after he'd yelled for help and Griffith answered the call, dodging around the fact that neither of them could talk freely but managing to communicate anyway. The explosion of _shit_ that rained down when they'd set up Griffith's cover story, and Mitchell's own shame at realizing that he was afraid for his cousin but thankful that the pressure of familial disapproval was finally being lifted from his shoulders and transfered to another.

The fear of Mitchell's realizing he had, not one, but two people to worry about now. The relief that Mitchell could at least know there'd be _someone_ there, that the wilderness would be one scrap less lonesome on the other end of the long thin line. The despair at realizing that _he_ couldn't be that someone.

Mitchell's voice is so calm, so even, that when the confessions turn more personal (the fear that Griffith would replace Mitchell in his mind, that he would be so weary and so worn through that Griffith would blend in his mind with Mitchell himself, that he'd somehow decide Griffith was Mitchell the way he _should_ have been, the way he could have been) it takes him a minute to realize what Mitchell's saying. And it brings to mind the stolen moments where he _had_ caught himself thinking, _the way Mitchell should be_ , the understudy, the stand-in, so _familiar_ \--

His arms tighten around Mitchell, and he shakes his head, quick and fast. "No matter how fucked up I was," he says, and Mitchell breathes out, suddenly shaky.

"I know," Mitchell says. "Head tells you it's crazy. Little voice doesn't want to listen."

And yeah, okay. He can sympathize. His own little voice has been getting a hell of a workout.

"Spence is okay, by the way," Mitchell says, and he's thankful for the knowledge, because he'd done his best to give Griffith a good solid foundation to build on before he'd sent the kid back to O'Neill, and it's good to know it worked. Or at least a little. "Mostly, at least. Little quieter, little jumpy. I haven't seen him, but Sam's been keeping an eye out for me. He's in DC, with Sam and -- the General --" The hesitation is so fractional he wouldn't have heard it if he hadn't been listening. "Working on the cleanup. I'll tell you what's been going on with that tomorrow. I don't want to get into it right now."

He doesn't blame Mitchell -- he'd always tried to keep politics out of his bed, no matter who might be sharing the bed with him at the time, and it's always been one of those resolutions honored more in the breach than in the observance, but now isn't the time to talk of kings and thrones. Can't be too bad, whatever it is. Mitchell doesn't seem worried, at least.

In fact, Mitchell's laughing, suddenly, softly, a chuff of amusement that's genuine for all it's lightning-quick. "And I don't know whose idea it was to have the President call up Uncle Henry and tell him Spence had been on a mission of 'utmost importance' and none of what they'd thought happened was really real, but _that_ story made the rounds about as fast as the first one had, and we're going to be hearing about it for _years_."

"I'm glad," he says, and means it. Griffith's a good kid. A damn good kid, hovering right on the cusp of not being a kid anymore, and it's important that the kid not take _too_ much damage from the aftermath. Not any damage that can't be avoided, at least. He'll have to see what he can do there. He's pretty sure O'Neill isn't going to be much help; O'Neill's going to take one look at Griffith and realize that _Griffith knows_ , and he's not too sure O'Neill will be able to look past that knowledge and do what needs to be done.

But that's for later. Right now, he's actually finding himself _relaxing_ , held safe and warm against that familiar lulling heartbeat, his nose full of Mitchell's scent, the somatic reassurance of Mitchell's skin against his own. And Mitchell's confessed his fears, and bringing Griffith into bed between them is not the way to ease them.

"Got a lot of cleaning up to do, still," Mitchell says, and in that one moment, he can hear the _weariness_ Mitchell's been carrying the whole damn way, the weight of knowing that what they've had to do will leave scars burned across the landscape of salt-strewn earth. The quiet knowledge that no, there wasn't any other way, and they couldn't have done anything but what they did, but also the acceptance that just because something was _necessary_ doesn't mean it will ever be _pleasant_ , and God, the sheer _understanding_ there fucking bowls him over.

So he rolls over, easing Mitchell down onto his back, draping himself over Mitchell's chest, holding on fierce and furious (and he can feel Mitchell's surprise and Mitchell's tension and the way Mitchell tries so fucking _hard_ to keep himself from grabbing back, trying to give him as much space as he might need or want, trying so fucking hard to keep from prompting any unpleasant memories or triggering any subconscious sentries) and rubbing the side of his cheek against Mitchell's chest. "I love you," he says. "God. I don't -- I can't --"

They're very nearly the same words he used in the hallway, earlier, when he'd first set foot back into this life they've built together, and he means something entirely different by it, and he knows -- _knows_ \-- Mitchell will know what he means. _Don't know how I got so fucking lucky. Can't worry anymore that this isn't going to work._

Because it's strange, really. To have wanted something (someone to _see_ ) for so long, and to have finally found it, and how long it takes his mind (the treacherous bastard) to understand and _accept_ that it's actually real.

Mitchell knows. Mitchell knows all of it. And it isn't just the knowledge, isn't just the understanding -- pearls of great price, all -- but the sudden conviction that if Mitchell had been there, if their roles had been reversed and Mitchell had been the one to answer the call, Mitchell would have done the same. Made the same choices. Made the same sacrifices. Not in the same way, because Mitchell's mind works differently and Mitchell's plans would have been planned in a different order, but that doesn't matter. The devil's in the details, but the details aren't what's important here. 

What's important is that Mitchell understands costs and prices and sacrifices, and Mitchell understands everything there is to know about the rock and the hard place, the tension-calculus of duty and honor and ethics and shame, and for once, for the first time, for the first time ever, he has come home from the hill and found someone who looks at him and does not see a monster.

"I love you too," Mitchell is saying, and the sound of his voice is deep and vast and boundless. "So much. So fucking much. God, this nearly killed me, having to -- and you -- and I couldn't --"

And there are pieces floating around inside his mind that he's only vaguely aware of right now -- the knowledge that Mitchell would have done the same, his conviction (bone-deep and unshakeable) that Mitchell is an honorable man, a _good_ man, and if Mitchell would have done the same, what it says about _him_ , the reassurances he's always tried to convince himself he doesn't need -- but Mitchell is looking up at him, and Mitchell is beneath him, and Mitchell is here and he is home and _this_ , this, right here, this is what he went away to war in order to defend. 

"Shhh," he says, and he kisses Mitchell's jaw, his cheek, his chin. "I know. I _know_. Tommorrow. We'll deal with it then. For now --" His voice catches, and he doesn't stop it, just kisses Mitchell again for punctuation. "For now I want to touch you," he says, and Mitchell makes a noise of indescribable longing, and he lets the sound and the reassurance fill his ears as he fits his lips against Mitchell's own and does.


	3. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/289846.html) 2008-12-13.)
> 
> When you get there: JD is quoting Neruda's "Sonnet VIII": _without going far away, I can see the whole of everything; I see, in your life, all that lives_.

The light's all wrong when Cam wakes up, stretched oddly across the hardwood flooring and the foot of the bed, and it takes him a minute to realize what it is: it's 0900 instead of 0600 when his subconscious or AJ usually wakes him up. (Kid's a damn morning person too; _thank you, Ash, for genetically infecting your offspring_ , and the thought doesn't hurt like a bullet to the heart anymore, not by now. Now it's just a calm quiet ache of loss and regret, and even that is fading.) 

Cam sits up, his heart starting to pound before he realizes what it is, was, must have been. JD turned off the alarm, and JD went to take care of AJ's breakfast, and JD is home, home, _home_. 

He pulls on a pair of sweatpants, thumps himself on into the kitchen. Sure enough, JD is sitting at the kitchen table, the crown of sunlight spilling across his head, his attention on his laptop, coffee mug half-lifted to his lips. AJ, in his playpen beside the table ( _good, he found the playpen_ , Cam thinks, distracted) is banging on the plastic activity-board, burbling happily away. JD's wearing a pair of boxers, nothing else. Good sign. Means JD's okay (mostly) in his own skin, still.

Cam's okay with JD's skin, too. Especially now that it's home with him again.

"Hey," he says, quietly, and JD doesn't look up. Knew he was there. Knew he was there before he said anything, no matter how distracted he looked, and Cam doesn't think it was just because his cane makes noise against the floors; he's pretty sure JD knew he was there from the minute he opened the bedroom door. He makes his way over to JD's side, puts a hand on the nape of JD's neck. Carefully. Telegraphing the move, in advance, giving JD plenty of time to shy away if he wants. 

JD doesn't shy away, but he doesn't precisely lean in, either. He looks up, squinting, distracted. "Morning," he says, sparse and quiet, a bare breath, an automatic greeting. He hesitates a second. Long enough that Cam notices; not long enough for Cam to decide what to do about it. Then his hand comes up to fall on Cam's hip, squeezing, briefly, before falling away again.

It's been a long fucking time since he hasn't known what to say to JD, but it's all right. He's promised himself he's not going to push this; JD can have as long as he needs, and, well, if he's giving JD time, he's gotta give himself time, too. "You eaten?" he says. "Could go for some bacon and eggs myself." He's not all that hungry, but JD looks thin. Too thin, like he's been surviving on nothing but coffee and nerves for the past half-year. Which probably isn't all that far from the truth.

"Not really hungry," JD says, absently, his attention caught by the laptop screen again. Cam tries not to crane his neck to see what he's doing -- give the guy some privacy -- but he can't really help himself; JD is triaging seven months' worth of the personal email that he couldn't risk downloading while he was still within Ba'al's network. He tries not to wince. There are a few emails in there that he wrote himself, middle-of-the-night letters that he wrote and sent before he could think twice, and he's been making himself not log onto the mail spool to delete them, but he doesn't have any particular desire to talk about them now. 

But they're all still bold and unread in JD's email client; JD mostly seems to be clearing out spam. There's a lot of spam. "You sure?" Cam asks. "It wouldn't be --"

"I _said_ , I'm not really hungry," JD says, sharper this time, more fierce. It startles Cam, and whatever he's thinking must show on his face, because JD closes his eyes and Cam can see the ripple of self-control running through his skin. "Sorry. It's not you. I'm just ... a little on edge this morning."

"Yeah," Cam says. "S'all good. Don't worry." He strokes his thumb over the knobs of JD's spine, one-two-three, barely aware that he's doing it. JD's skin is hot and familiar beneath his hand.

JD goes even more still. "Down more," he says. "And upward."

There's something in the undercurrents of his voice, something hot and sharp and nasty, and Cam stops himself from stepping back with sheer force of will. "What?"

The stillness passes. JD sets his coffee mug down on the table with a sharp click, rubs both his hands over his face hard and rough. "Sorry," he says, again. "I'm -- kinda fucked up, really. Trying not to be. Not really succceeding."

"It's okay," Cam says. He lets his hand fall, picks up JD's coffee mug, takes it over to the counter and takes down one of his own. Their mugs have wide enough handles that he can carry both of them together one-handed; he doctors both cups with cream and sugar (three times each for JD's cup) and brings them back over. Then turns back and takes down the box of crap powdered donuts from the pantry, brings them back over to the table with him. He shouldn't be eating them, but hey. They're made of pretty much pure sugar; if he puts them in front of JD, maybe JD will eat _something_.

"I meant the snake test," JD says, after a minute of staring out the window. (Hasn't seemed to notice the garden beds out there, the ones Cam put in so painstakingly that spring, with Theo's help and AJ's supervision, bright and spilling over with kitchen herbs. Cam won't hold it against him.) "The Fraiser test. Upward pressure between T3 and T4 --" He turns his head a little more, indicates the spot with two careless fingers pointing straight at the spray of what Cam thinks might be Asgard runes, X marks the spot. "Eighty percent of the time, it'll show you if someone's a snake and trying to hide it."

"I wasn't thinking that," Cam says. Keeps his voice even. Drinks his coffee. JD spent six months on high sentry and high alert, paranoia his only chance of survival. It'll take him a while before he forgets the habits, is all. 

JD laughs, a near-soundless chuff of air that doesn't sound amused at all. "Sure you were. And if you weren't, you should have been." There's no censure in his voice, not really. Statement of fact. Nothing more.

"I really wasn't," Cam says. He opens the box, chooses one of the mini-donuts. If you bite into them, you get powdered sugar everywhere; if you eat them in one bite, you're pretty much stuck chewing for a damn long time. He decides on the powdered sugar everywhere. "I could tell you I was, though, it'd make you feel better."

He doesn't say that he's pretty sure that if JD is a Goa'uld host, he/they/it wouldn't have mentioned the possibility. Doesn't say that he thinks -- _thinks_ \-- that he'd notice. 

Really doesn't say that if JD _is_ a Goa'uld host, he's not sure he wants to know, not as long as JD's home and here with him again, because he really doesn't want to face what it says about him.

JD sighs. "I'm going to be apologizing to you pretty much nonstop for the rest of the year, I have a feeling," he finally says. Focuses back in on Cam. His eyes aren't _older_ now -- they've been old the whole way -- but there's a depth to them Cam hasn't seen in a long time, since the days and nights when JD would let the mask slip and slide, let the teenage seeming fall away and show the man perpetually behind it. That man's a lot closer to the surface now. Or maybe he's so much further away. "I don't --"

"Shut up," Cam says, perfectly pleasant, perfectly loving. Always been the way they communicate, and everyone who listens would swear they're mortal enemies half the time, and they know the difference. Best thing he can do right now is to give JD as much of a piece of home as he can. "Apologize as much or as little as you need to, but don't apologize for needing to. I get it. It's _okay_. I told you. Body'd have to be stupid to expect you to come home and be all shiny happy people holding hands."

It gets him a tiny wince and a shudder, but it's a _familiar_ one. "If you get that song stuck in my head, I am going to kill you and hide the body," JD says, and whatever demon's riding him has passed him over, just a bit, and Cam's glad to see it.

"Not in front of the baby," Cam says, automatic antiphon, and eats the other half of the donut.

Doesn't take long before JD's eating too, and Cam carefully does not comment upon it, doesn't even _look_ at JD while he's doing it, because he's pretty sure JD has no clue he's putting things in his mouth. If JD hasn't lost twenty pounds in the last eight months or so, it's only because he's put on more muscle; he's whipcord-thin, all angles and edges, bone and sinew and steel. He looks like he's been pushing himself to the ends of his endurance and beyond for a long damn time. It's going to take a while to erase the marks it's left.

There are so many questions Cam wants to ask about what it was like, what JD _felt_ through all those long days and nights apart and underneath, but he can't. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time, not until those memories have faded, become less immediate. JD told him what happened. He even told him what he _felt_ , to an extent, a little, in pieces. Not all of it. There are so many things Cam can't ask about, won't ask about, but oh, Lord, he wants to know.

_He was fucking terrifying,_ Spence had said, on a secured line from Washington, working his way through his own aftermath and his own recovery. _Uncle Cam, I wish I could tell you he was going to be fine, but -- it was like he was someone else, the whole way, and half the time I would look at him and I wouldn't see him, I'd see this -- this_ thing _staring back at me from underneath his eyes, like there was someone else in his head..._ And Spence had trailed off, and Cam had stayed quiet, and finally Spence had said, _But there is, isn't there?_

_Yeah,_ Cam had said, quiet and calm, the way he's had to learn how to be, the perfect Lucasta waiting for his soldier to come back from war. _Yeah, there is. But it's him, too._

But eventually JD puts down his coffee cup again, focuses straight in on Cam, looks like he's decided to set things aside and pretend to be normal for a while. "So," he says. "Tell me where we are on the contract."

There's an undercurrent of pleading beneath it: _give me something else to concentrate on_. So Cam rolls his eyes, a bit theatrically. "Farther than you might expect, not as far as I'd hoped," he says, and every word is a promise that he'll play along with whatever JD needs him to do. "I got some help on the logic board from Sam. We got the hardware working, or at least past burn-in. Haven't placed the order for the prototype units yet, in case you see anything you want to change, but it works. Software's not doing all that great, but what I've got is in the Subversion repo, and the flaws I'm trying to smooth out of it are all checked into Jira. You can take a look, see if anything strikes you as immediately fixable."

JD nods, his face smoothing out, his left hand stroking idly over the keyboard of his laptop. "Take a look after I finish the email triage," he says. "Figure it'll take me a few days to get back up to speed."

"You don't have to --" Cam starts, but the look JD gives him has him shutting up, fast. "Yeah," he says, instead. "Time, tide, and the Department of Defense waits for no man. I gotcha."

And it's nice, really, to be able to go and fetch his laptop and bring it into the kitchen too, to work with JD across the table from him, quiet but _present_ , there in body the way Cam's conjured him in spirit so many times. He's had so many long conversations with JD sitting at this very table, with the part of JD being played by an empty bench and a whole lot of imagination, that just having JD there to look at whenever he lifts his eyes is a miracle even if JD is silent the whole way. 

And when JD slides his bare foot underneath the table to rest it against Cam's ankle, hesitant, tentative, Cam knows that it's going to be okay. Maybe not today; maybe not tomorrow. But it's going to be okay. 

His cell phone rings around 1130 or so, the Family ringtone (endless repetitions of the Addams Family theme), and seeing the way JD freezes to hear it, Cam almost lets it go to voice mail. It's odd, really, or maybe it's not odd at all, to see the way JD's trained himself into shutting down his face, his voice, when something happens that he doesn't want to think about. That impulse has always been there, but now it's more pronounced. Then JD's moving again, looking back down at the laptop, clicking on another email. "Phone," he says, casual and offhanded, not casual at all. 

"Voice mail," Cam counters. 

"They'll just call back." JD looks up. "Answer the damn phone, Mitchell."

So Cam does.

It's Momma of course, the way it's always his momma on Fridays at lunchtime, because Momma has been so careful the whole damn way to make sure that she keeps in touch, keeps from sounding like she's passing judgement, because Momma believes that it's important her children know they're loved no matter what. He's aware of a certain level of trepidation when he answers the phone, like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Hasn't thought a damn thing about what he's going to tell the family, really, now that JD's home again. Should have talked it out with him. (But when? Not last night, when they'd needed to take the time for _them_ , needed to reassure each other that they were still there. Not this morning, when JD looked and felt so fragile Cam was nigh-certain he'd shatter if you held him up in the wrong light. Can't be helped. Just keep going.) 

There's really only one topic of Family gossip right now -- still -- and that's Spence. President Hayes called Uncle Henry three days after Spence had called Cam the first time, not explaining anything, just to proffer personal thanks for raising a son with a strong enough sense of duty that he'd be willing to follow orders for the good of his country no matter how painful those orders were. It had been enough to get Spence out of the doghouse -- just barely -- but trying to figure out what really happened is the topic _du jour_ and will be for a while. Momma hasn't asked him a single question about it. Momma hasn't had to.

But what Momma has to say isn't about Spence. Not precisely. "Did you hear that your cousin Skipper is home from wherever he was posted?" she asks, and there's an undercurrent of _something_ in it, and Cam bites his lip. "Didn't even get any leave. They just wrapped him up and sent him on up to Washington, and he hasn't even stopped in to say hello to anyone who's stationed there yet, either."

"No, Momma," Cam says, quietly. "Didn't hear anything about it." Lie. He talked to Skipper last weekend, fresh back from Atlantis, culture shock starting to set in. Gave him a whole lecture on what Spence had told him, in case Spence wouldn't talk to his twin, because Skipper needs to know and Spence needs someone who _does_ know, someone he trusts, someone other than Sam or Colonel Reynolds. (Or General O'Neill, and he isn't thinking about that, because he knows Spence is giving the General a wide berth and he doesn't blame him in the least.) 

Momma hrumpfs. "Got some nice swampland in Florida you wanna sell me, too?" she says.

"Momma, _please_ ," he says. He's standing at the kitchen counter, cell phone in hand, looking out over the backyard through the window behind the sink. Not looking at JD. 

"Don't you 'Momma, please' me, young man," she says, tart and sharp. "Still don't know what you boys are up to, but the day you can keep a secret from your mother is the day they put me in the ground. You tell Skipper the next time you talk to him that he needs to get Spence down here for a weekend soon, because if Spence is doing poorly enough that they brought Skipper home early to try to straighten him out, well, boy needs his family around him. And don't think I didn't notice that you didn't come home for the Fourth, either. I'll expect to see you home soon too, young man." 

Cam's other hand curls around the edge of the counter. "It's -- kinda hard to find the time," he says. "We're gonna be pretty busy for the next few weeks --"

And dammit, _dammit_ , he said 'we', not 'I', and Momma will fucking _hear_ it, and Momma will know that he doesn't mean him and AJ. Damn it all to hell and gone, because Momma's voice sharpens and she says, "'We'," in the way that isn't a question, and Cam just wants to put his head down against the counter and _scream_. "So he's home, then."

Four words, with a whole _lecture_ of substrates beneath them: no names named (doesn't need to be, and Cam thinks, suddenly, that it's the sound of Momma being careful, not the sound of Momma not knowing what name to use), and 'home' instead of 'back' or 'back there' or something even sharper. "Momma --" 

"You put him on the phone, then," she says, and it's the sound of Momma having made up her mind.

Cam feels helpless beneath the onslaught, and he turns his head to look at JD, and JD is staring back at him with the look that says he knows exactly what's going on. He doesn't know what to do. So he points at the phone, points at JD, makes the gesture that says _I don't fucking know what to say, but I'll lie to her if you need me to_ , and JD's face sharpens a little bit and he stands up.

Cam isn't going to let it go without a fight, though. "Momma, I didn't say --"

"I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you," Momma says, and JD comes across the kitchen floor on ghost feet and holds out his hand for the phone, and Cam surrenders it with a sigh and a sense that he's fucked this up beyond repair.

"Ma'am," JD says, into the phone, just that syllable, nothing more, and his face is a pale blank _noh_ mask, but he rests two fingers in the crook of Cam's elbow for half an instant: forgiveness, benediction. He looks like a man facing the firing squad at dawn, waiting and fearing the _coup de grace_ all at once. Cam can hear Momma's voice on the other end of the phone, rising, falling, but he can't hear what she's saying, and JD's face doesn't give anything away.

"Yes, ma'am," JD says, and "no, ma'am," JD says, and "I'm sorry," JD says, and there's nothing in his voice but that same control. He isn't looking at Cam. He's staring at one of the counter tiles, sparse and self-controlled. A minute goes by; two, three. "Yes, ma'am," JD says, again; "as much as I can," and then, finally, "Me, too." 

He hangs up the phone instead of handing it back to Cam, snapping it shut with a sharp click that makes Cam fear for the phone's longevity, and sets it on the counter.

"Command performance," JD says. His eyes are shuttered, lensed over with that stranger Cam's starting to recognize looking back at him. "Your mother wants to see us as soon as possible."

Cam breathes out the breath he's been holding. "I can put her off," he offers. He wants -- desperately -- to know what else Momma said to JD, and he knows that if he asks he won't get an answer. "Give you a chance to --"

"It's fine," JD says. He steps around Cam, carefully, around to the coffee pot: dumps the grounds into the trash under the sink, takes out the beans and the grinder. He doesn't sound as though it's fine. He sounds as though he'd rather chew off his own right arm without anaesthetic. "Next weekend should be okay."

Next weekend is not okay. Right about now, _never_ would be pretty okay. "Hey," Cam says, and oh, God, he wants to touch _so badly_ , and he can't; can't even reach out and show JD that he does want to touch, because that would force JD to either allow the touch to make him feel better or shrink back from it and then wince at himself for doing so. 

But JD turns to look at him, and his face is controlled -- too controlled -- but at least it's not pained. So Cam keeps going. "We really don't have to do this. Fuck them. Seriously. If you don't want to go, we won't fucking go. Fuck it. It doesn't matter. If they have to wait for their chance to yell at us, they can fucking wait. Or never get it at all. I don't care."

It's true, he realizes, even as he's saying it. Right now, if it came down to JD vs. his family, well, there is absolutely zero question as to which one will win. He loves his family. But he _loves_ JD, always, forever, wholly and entirely, alpha to omega, first to last, and if it comes down to JD vs. family -- well, his family should know better than to put him in that position.

But JD's smiling. Just a little, the edges of his lips tipped up so faintly Cam wouldn't see it unless he was looking, and the expression is faint but it's _real_. Real and honest, not the kind of pasted-on expression that's been sitting there since JD came home, and Cam stands in the kitchen in a puddle of sunshine and looks at the man he loves and it's _him_. 

"Relax," JD says. "I told you. I don't mind. Yeah, she's gonna yell. She's earned a little bit of yelling. Your family's been dicked over in all of this. She told me she's glad I'm home safe and sound."

That's not all Momma said -- can't be -- but it makes Cam's heart sing to hear it. Even if he can't quite reconcile that with the half-insinuations Momma's been dropping on him since the moment he woke up to find JD gone and the game afoot. But he can't quite make his mind work, because he's standing there and looking at JD looking back at him, and all he wants to do is go over there and _hold_ JD.

"Okay," he finally says, when the clock runs out on his thinking of something more insightful, something more fitting. "I -- okay."

JD hits the button on the coffee grinder and taps the resulting grounds into the basket. Steps around Cam again to fill the carafe and start the brew. Takes a deep breath. "What's for lunch?" he asks. 

"Whatever you want," Cam says. "Whatever you want."

And maybe it's okay.

JD is the one to feed AJ lunch (doesn't make a big deal out of it, just grabs bottle _and_ baby as soon as AJ starts fussing) and the look on his face when he looks down at the baby -- not quite a baby, not anymore, ten months old, crawling already, growing so fast that Cam can't keep knitting the baby clothes fast enough -- is both quiet wonder and a curious regret. But AJ seems content to be held, not kicking or squirming the way he does so often for Cam, not fussing and protesting that he can hold the bottle himself with his string of meaningless baby-talk syllables. It's as though AJ knows that JD is home, home for good. (Please God, Cam thinks. Please God.)

And maybe it's a sign that Cam needs a _brain transplant_ , or maybe he's just suddenly forgotten how to be part of a couple again, forgotten about the details of what he should share and what he can leave for later, because it's just past lunch when the front door opens and Theo calls, bright and cheerful, "Where's my best man today?" and JD is suddenly out of the kitchen-table booth with his back to the wall and a look that's half terror, half _accusation_.

_Fuck_.

"She means AJ," Cam says, quickly, up and heading for the hallway to head Theo off at the pass before she can get into the kitchen. "Babysitter, one of Uncle Al's students, fuck, I'm sorry, let me just --"

He makes his escape before JD can say anything, before JD has to say anything, and he doesn't hear JD's footsteps moving behind him, but he hasn't heard JD's footsteps all damn day, because JD is like a fucking _ghost_. Theo's carrying her laptop bag slung over one shoulder, her hair braided up today, looking tan and cheerful and happy. "Hey," she says, seeing him coming for her. "Hope you don't mind me coming over early today. Stephen's got a new girlfriend and they have taken over the _entire apartment_ , and the library's full of kids since it's summer, and Kay-Beth has the office today ..."

She winds down, seeing the look on his face or _something_. "Cam?" she asks, uncertain, tentative. "Are you okay? Did something happen?"

"Might as well introduce me," comes the voice from behind Cam's shoulder, and oh, there's hell to pay in there, cold and tight and unyielding, and all Cam can do is hope Theo's not people-smart enough to hear it. He turns. JD's standing behind him, just in the doorway between the hall and the kitchen, and he's thrown on a pair of jeans and one of the long-sleeved black t-shirts he wears when he's trying to hide himself away, and Cam can't think of when he lost control of this situation. ( _Two days,_ he thinks. _God, would it have been too much to ask for two fucking days?_ ) 

But between the puzzled look on Theo's face and the tautness on JD's, well, he doesn't have _time_ to bemoan his fate. "JD, this is Theo," he finds himself saying, before he can even stop to reason out all the best ways -- the only good ways -- to play this. "Theo, this is JD. Theo's been watching the Mouth for us through my PT appointments."

He can tell the second, the exact fucking _second_ , when the penny drops for Theo, because her face goes utterly and completely _blank_ , and he can see her taking his meaning. She's trying not to react, but she's _obviously_ trying not to react, the kind of reaction you get when someone's trying to do the polite thing. Because he's told her about JD (a little) and he's told her about their life together (bits and pieces) and he's refused to talk about anything that'd be too hard to explain (like where JD was and what he was up to), but in the entire time they've been talking and not-talking about it, in the entire parade of the past four or five months that he's been spending three times a week with Theo, pouring out his heart and soul to her even if he's been short on detail, he never once fucking mentioned the fact that his missing lover looks like he's fucking _still in diapers_ in shitty light.

"Charmed," JD says, in the sort of tone that says he's really not. And yeah, some of it might be the way Theo's looking back at him, the careful I'm-not-thinking-anything-here that _shows_ more plainly than it would if she came out and said something, and he knows JD will be able to both hear _and_ see it. But more of it, Cam thinks, comes from something else entirely, and he's suddenly _fucking pissed_ , because he might not be looking at JD, he might not be able to read JD's face and body languge, but there's an accusation in JD's voice even if JD doesn't know it's there, and Cam doesn't know if he wants to holler or just _cry_.

Seven months. Seven months of waiting, one of them after he already knew that the deed was done and the bird had flown, and he'd been goddamn patient and understanding and a fucking _paragon of fucking virtue_ , if he does say so him-fucking-self, the entire fucking way, and now JD is standing behind him and accusing Cam in a single syllable of having been staying at home and betraying him the _whole fucking time_.

Cam turns around and points a finger at JD. JD has the good graces to look surprised, at least. "Don't," he says, and he can hear his own voice, and it's just as tight and cold as JD's had been. "Don't you even. Don't you even fucking _dare_."

The look on JD's face cycles through surprise, to anger, and all the way down to the blank calm _control_ JD uses when something's happened that he can't afford to react to at that very moment, all in the space between one breath and the next. "Yeah, okay," he says. His voice is as neutral as a fucking _robot's_. "I warned you."

_Warned you I was going to be an asshole for a while_ , is what he's trying to say, and yeah. He had. But that doesn't mean Cam has to like it. He'll put up with all kinds of JD's shit, because JD has _earned_ a little bit of crazy, a little bit of grace for a rough landing and a whole lot of love and care and understanding. But there are some things Cam will _not_ fucking put up with.

Theo's missing a good ninety percent of this conversation. (Thank fuck.) When Cam turns back to her, she's taken a step back, whether from what she sees on _his_ face or what she sees on JD's or just from the simple sense of self-preservation that comes from knowing there's something going on that you shouldn't be here for. "I'm sorry," she says, quickly. "I can --"

And maybe JD saw something in Cam's face, too, maybe he managed to convey _something_ of his position, because JD smiles, and Cam knows that smile for one of JD's lies (since JD has smiles that lie and smiles that tell the truth, and learning the difference took him a long fucking time and he's still refining his translating dictionary) but he also knows Theo won't. "No," JD says, perfectly pleasant, perfectly agonizing. "My fault. I'm not fit company for humans this week. Mitchell said you were one of his uncle's students?"

Theo tosses Cam a quick, nervous glance. Cam tries to give her a look of reassurance: _it's okay, really, just go with it_. "Yeah," she says, a little hesitant, a little uncertain. "I'm, uh, working on my dissertation. I'm hoping to defend in the spring." 

JD nods. "Thanks for giving him a hand while I was away," he says, giving nothing away, and Theo's eyes flicker back to Cam's again. Quick and nervous, and _Cam_ knows she's looking to him for a hint about how to play it, how to read the signals JD's giving off, but he also knows JD is going to see it as a lover's guilty conscience. 

Fuck it all to hell and back, this is _not_ going well.

"You're welcome. He pays pretty well," Theo finally says, casting around for some way to make this situation okay, some kind of small talk to fill in the nervous spaces. And Cam winces, because it's about the worst possible thing she could have said, but there's no helping it. Not at all. 

"C'mon," he says, before either Theo or JD can say something else that'll make this whole clusterfuck even _worse_ , and turns around to limp down the hall. 

It takes a minute before Theo follows; she won't move until JD does, Cam thinks, and he still can't hear JD's footsteps against the floor, because JD has learned to walk more silently than he ever has before. It feels like a long damn time until he can feel the displacement of air beside him, the subtle and innumerable telltales that there's someone else within his radius; not until he's already made it back into the kitchen, and set a pot of coffee to brewing too. He wonders what had passed between Theo and JD, wordlessly, back in the entryway before JD had let her pass.

"Do you mind me stealing the office to get some work done before you go?" Theo asks, standing in the center of the kitchen, her hands wringing the strap of her laptop bag. "I really could come back later. It's not a big deal."

"Bite your tongue," Cam says, without looking over his shoulder, without looking to see how JD is taking it. "You know where everything is. You had lunch yet? We already ate, but I could make you something."

There's a minute of hesitation, and Cam wants to look. Wants to make sure Theo's okay, wants to make sure JD isn't glaring at her, wants to make sure she isn't tense and nervous and awkward. Except he knows she will be, and he doesn't _really_ want to know if JD's glaring, because that's an answer he doesn't particularly want to have. If he knows about it, he has to deal with it. And he's not ready to start fighting with JD yet.

But it passes. "No, I'm fine," Theo says, and there's compassion in her voice -- more than he might have expected, because Theo's got a good heart but her awkwardness with people usually overrules it, when dealing with strangers -- and with anyone else, it might help. With JD, the compassion will only fuck things up worse. "You guys have things to do. I _am_ sorry I interrupted." A pause, fractional, hesitant. "It was nice meeting you," she adds, to JD, and then there are footsteps receding down the hall, and the sound of a door closing.

Cam curls his fingers around the edge of the counter again, bows his head, and makes himself count to ten -- to twenty -- before he turns around.

JD is close enough to touch, but he knew that much by the radiant heat against his shoulders. His face is blank, carved from stone. He's watching Cam, his gaze rising from where it had been resting on Cam's shoulders to land not on Cam's eyes, but right beneath them, watching the tiny muscles at their edges. 

It's where you watch when you're trying to figure out if someone's lying to you.

"I will put up with just about anything from you right now," Cam says, hearing his own voice ringing clear as a bell even for all that he's trying to keep it low, to avoid disturbing AJ or being overheard in the office. "Except that accusation." 

He doesn't need to name it; he doesn't need to specify it. Won't lend it legitimacy by so much as giving voice to a denial, because even that would be giving it too much credit. He can hear the accusation in his own voice in return, the endless nights of worry and prayer, all the things he swore to himself he'd never throw back in JD's face once he came home. ( _Let him come home heart-sick, let him come home having forsaken me, let him come home without once giving thanks for all I did for him when he was away -- only please, God, let him come home._ ) He hates himself for that knowledge, for that broken vow, because he knows JD will hear every last inch of the torment that's there in his voice, hear it even where nobody else in the world would, and JD will add each drop of the pain Cam's words bear to his own personal balance-sheet, the sins for which he's already doing penance.

To his credit, JD actually flushes at Cam's words, dropping his eyes, his cheeks coloring faintly. "I don't," he says, then stops himself. He closes his eyes. When he speaks again, his eyes stay shut, and his voice sounds like it's coming from a long way away. "You could still have that life, you know."

It takes Cam a second to realize _what the fuck_ JD is talking about. Because of course. JD would have seen a pretty woman, her eyes bright and laughing, her smile free and easy, with a good brain and a good body and a good attitude on life. JD would have seen a pretty woman Cam could love, who brought with her none of the shadows and demons that had followed him home. JD would have seen a pretty woman with whom Cam could have a normal life, free from the endless gossip, the accusing stares, the silent judgement and disapproval of everyone who saw their twenty-year age difference and saw it from the wrong end and thought: _pervert_.

The knowledge that JD is only trying to spare him from further pain doesn't do a damn thing to cut through the sudden crashing _anger_ that threatens to bear him down beneath its tides.

He's moving before he can even realize what he's doing; he hits lefthanded these days, his right hand occupied in the task of bearing his weight on his cane, and he's lost his perfect stance. It doesn't matter. The punch is a quick left jab, not to the face, to the shoulder, and he's realizing what he's doing even as he's striking, in just enough time to pull the punch so he doesn't break JD's fucking _collarbone_. He's got just enough time to register that JD's right hand is coming up, moving as though to strike him in the gut, automatic reflex -- he hit out of anger; he hadn't thought to leave himself defended -- before JD jerks backwards, stopping himself before he can follow through with the blow, reeling backward and stumbling. Not from the punch; Cam didn't hit him hard enough.

There's shock and anger in JD's eyes, but there's a deep and abiding _reassurance_ there, too. Because JD knows his temper. JD knows that the only things to rouse that temper into waking are the things that cut deep and dirty.

"Anything," Cam repeats, his blood still thundering in his ears, "except that accusation. You think I went through all of that to fuck you over the minute you walked back through that door?"

"Mitchell," JD says. His voice is like a wound taken in the darkness from a knife so sharp it doesn't even hurt going in, leaving you to bleed out before you even notice it. "I --"

"Look at me," Cam says. He waits until JD does, waits until JD lifts those ageless eyes to meet his. He holds JD's eyes with his own, putting all his promises into that look. All his fears, too, because you don't fear losing what you don't give a shit about, and he knows JD knows it. "I love you," he says, and there's a part of him that notices AJ's started to fuss, recognizing the undercurrent of emotion swirling in the room, and there's a part of him that can only pay attention to JD, JD looking back at him, JD come home. "You listen to me. I love you. I _love you_. That is not gonna change, and it is not gonna fade, and you are _not_ going to fucking be able to drive me away no matter _how_ fucking hard you try."

The words go straight through JD; he can see JD's shoulders jerking, see JD take another step backwards just like he did when Cam hit him and just as unsteady. "I'm not --" he starts. Stops himself. Closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Cam can see it ripple through his chest, his body, his shoulders all the way on down. "Okay. Yeah. Fair enough."

Because that's what it is. One part fear of abandonment ( _he'll have changed his mind when I was gone_ ), one part fear of reaction ( _give him enough time to think about it and he'll change his mind now_ ), and they've melted together to form a desire to pull Cam close with one hand and push him away with the other. Sometime in the past seven months, JD's learned (relearned, Cam knows, and it makes him mourn to think it) to do unto others before others have a chance to do unto you, and part of him wants to push Cam away for Cam's sake, and part of him wants to drive Cam away to protect himself. It hurts less to lose someone when you drive them away at a time of your own choosing.

"Only way I'm leaving you," Cam says, holding on to his quiet dignity, "is if you look me in the eye and honestly tell me you want me to go. And probably not even then."

"Fuck, no," JD says, quick and thoughtless, an automatic answer to a question couched in the shape of a statement. "I just --" He stops again, drags one hand over his hair, pulls out his hair elastic and shakes his hair loose. Pulls it back again and re-ties it. Cam notices, with the part of him that's concentrating _so fucking hard_ on reading all the things JD's screaming with his body and will never give voice to with his lips, that JD's hands are shaking. A tiny tremor, barely perceptible. Cam wouldn't see it if he weren't looking. There's so much of JD he never would have seen if he hadn't learned how to look. 

Cam waits. He can tell JD isn't done talking yet, and he's learned a hell of a lot about how to wait with grace recently.

"I thought I'd get home and it would all be over," JD finally says. Quietly, so quietly, like he's talking to himself and not to Cam at all, and he turns and looks unseeing out into the backyard. Cam leans back against the counter, its edging biting into the scar tissue at the small of his back, and waits. It feels like he's been waiting so long. "Part of me did, at least. Bigger part knows how stupid it was. I knew better. I _know_ better. Doesn't mean I didn't hope anyway." 

It's the kind of pause Cam can speak through, and he does. "Big difference between this and then," he says, and when JD turns to look back at him, startled, he fights the urge to smile reassurance, because he knows JD won't find it reassuring at all. "That, you dealt with on your own. This part, we do together."

JD closes his eyes again, taking another deep breath. "Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm -- I really am sorry. Been saying it nonstop since I walked back through that door, it feels like, but I am."

He's making Cam's heart break for him. "Don't be sorry," Cam says, letting his voice sharpen. "Just be _here_. Not there. Not wherever. _Here_."

JD's eyes flash startled for a second, then turn rueful. Acknowledging the point; _touché_ , that look says, the quiet acceptance of a challenge, a dare. Cam's never met the monks who taught JD the practices he sets such store by; they almost never talk about the things JD learned from them. But Cam knows that one of the things JD learned from them was how to face truth unflinching, and it's why he's always promised himself to give that same truth to JD when he needs it. Love demands he do no less.

" _Sin ir tan lejos puedo verlo todo, veo en tu vida todo lo viviente_ ," JD murmurs, and Cam knows he's quoting something and doesn't know what, and Spanish isn't one of the languages he can translate on the fly. But it's all right. He can recognize what JD means. It took JD long enough to be able to say _I love you_ plain; Cam won't begrudge him however long it takes before he can win back to that place again. If it takes someone else's words in other languages, well, at least it's being said at all.

He feels exhausted, like he's run a marathon. He can only imagine what JD feels. So he steps aside (not away, never away) and back over to the coffeemaker, taking down a fresh mug from the cabinet above it, and he takes a deep breath and rolls his shoulders and tries to let go of the tension that's crept into them. "I'm sorry, too," he says. For losing his temper. For bad timing. For everything JD's had to go through, and go through _alone_ , and for all the things that kept him from going along. For all the suspicions he entertained too, through all the long days and longer nights, that he hasn't spoken out loud yet -- perhaps ever -- but that he knows JD can spot in him just the way he can spot them in JD. 

_I'm sorry_ , he says, with his back and his shoulders and the curve of his neck, with the cant of his elbows and the rise and fall of his chest, all the unspoken signals that have always meant more to JD than the words ever would or could. _I'm sorry. I love you. I'm here._

"Do the next thing," JD says, behind him, at his elbow, at his side, forevermore. The meaning of life. Do the next thing, and do it with love, and maybe it's all they have, maybe it's all that anyone ever has, but it'll have to be enough.

"Maybe we should go find a nice quiet beach somewhere," Cam says. "Hole up for a week. Or a month. Or a year. Just you and me and the guy who'll keep bringing us incredibly alcoholic drinks in coconut shells."

When he turns around, coffee in hand, JD's lips have curved upward, his _true_ smile, the one that so many people think isn't a smile at all. "With paper umbrellas?" he asks, and yeah, Cam has to laugh. And the moment passes. Not gone, not forgotten, but set aside for a while. They'll come back to it, again and again, Cam knows. They're going to be having this conversation for weeks. Months. Again and again, in every iteration possible, and the man who came back to him both is and isn't his lover, and it took them nearly two years to win through to the depth of love they'd found. Cam won't expect to be that easy with this stranger-not-stranger in less than a day. He'll have to take it on faith that he'll be able to do it at all.

"I have to go to my PT session soon," Cam says, the words dragged out of him unwilling, not wanting to leave. Not wanting to go out into the world outside. He feels storm-tossed, battered, like the world has changed so much in the last day that to step out past the threshold of their front door might break him, to see everything bright and sun-drenched and looking exactly as it had. "Will you --" He changes his mind about how he wants to phrase it. "Do you want to stay here, or come with?"

JD's eyes flicker to the playpen where AJ's fussiness has calmed, to the hallway down which Theo had disappeared. "I think I should stay here," he says, slowly, judiciously. "If you don't mind. I ... don't think that going out would be a very good idea." His gaze returns to the mouth of the hallway, stays there. "And ... I think I owe your friend an apology. A real apology."

The words are torn out of him, Cam can tell, the thought of apologizing to Theo making him want to twitch. But he'll do it. He'll make himself do it. JD is nothing if not scrupulously fair. For a second, he's tempted to cancel his appointment, say _fuck it_ , stay home and mediate. But he won't do JD any favors by trying to shield and shelter him. You learn to swim by getting thrown in the deep end. You learn to be a human being again by long, hard practice.

"Okay," he says. Hesitates for a minute. "Is it -- would it be okay if --"

Figuring out how to put it is hard. Fortunately, he and JD have a hell of a lot of practice in reading each other without the words. JD steps forward, into the circle of his arms, his own arms closing around Cam's waist and holding. He rests his face against the curve of Cam's neck, breathing out against Cam's skin, and his touch burns. 

"It's always okay," JD says, quietly, his voice ringing with truth. "Even through the worst of it. It's always okay."

It's a hope and a prayer more than a vow and a promise, but Cam is willing to take it.


	4. three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/353197.html) 2009-10-27.)

Sing a song of sixpence, pocket full of lies. Years since he took first vows and he's blown past the edges of each and every one of them more times than he can count, but none of them hurt as much as the ones he's breaking here. Since the start of this all there have been a thousand things unfair to Mitchell, from barest thrust to strongest blows, and this is the worst, the dearest: for six months he taught himself how to live with both ears open and one eye pinned behind his back, waiting for the snake's next move in the planetary chess game that was his life, and now that he's won (tells himself he has at least) his hindbrain's guarding against the snake deciding to make it two falls out of three and Mitchell's the one who'll bear the brunt of it all. A month wasn't long enough to make it back to the neighborhood of _okay_. A year might get him in the same zip code. A decade would be better.

But he doesn't have the month and he _really_ doesn't have the year, no matter how much he needs to crawl up inside his own head and kick the ladder free. He's got five minutes to brace himself, decide how he's going to play it. Seven minutes if he drives slowly enough. (And if he slows down -- country back roads, winding hills, yadda, no matter that he's driven this approach enough times that he can probably do it blindfolded -- Mitchell will know that he's avoiding the arrival, and he's dropped enough shit in Mitchell's lap in the past eight months or so; he doesn't need more.) 

Mitchell's sitting in the passenger seat, not looking over at him. And they've been on the road and in the air for a good five hours now (five hours and thirty-seven minutes, but who's counting) and he could count the number of words Mitchell's said to him on the toes of both feet -- both _Mitchell's_ feet -- and have some left over for tea and a game of bowls. Would be triggering him from here to hell and gone -- too familiar, too like Sara, the way she'd punish him without a word for the first week after he'd come home from the hills without being able to tell her anything about where he'd been and what he'd been doing -- except he knows that that's not how Mitchell rolls. Mitchell's just quiet. Thinking.

Worrying.

Command performances suck when it's not your command but it is your performance, and if it weren't for the fact Mitchell's family has borne the brunt of sacrifice often enough that they should have an entire damn branch of the service named after them by now, he'd tell them all to piss up a rope and then hang themselves with it. Can't do that to Sassy Mitchell, though. She deserves more. She deserves better. 

She deserves to know all about the hero she bore and all the heroes she's raised, and it's been years -- decades -- since he's wanted to break OPSEC this badly. Not on his behalf. (All right, a little.) She can have whatever opinion of him she wants to cherish, and if that means there's a hand-knit him-shaped voodoo doll underneath Sassy Mitchell's bed with pins shoved in it every-which-way, that won't leave him crying into his beer of a night. But the family's bad opinion of him reflects on _Mitchell_ , on the way they all think of their darling golden boy, and it wears on Mitchell like a drip on a stone. 

If he had his druthers they'd go riding off merrily into the sunset tra-la, over and done, last call for a pint, hurry up boys it's time. He's spent his whole life alternating running with coming in from the cold, and one may be the loneliest number but it's a number he knows full well how to count to. He could disappear completely, a stone dropped into the lake of fortune with nary a ripple, but this new life he's built with sticks and mud and bits of clay has ties in too many places for him to shed his skin again. 

Cutting Mitchell off from his family would be cruelty beyond compare. The merest shadow necessary to keep his lover's head above water and his ass out of the alligator pit nearly broke Mitchell this past year, _would_ have broken Mitchell if Mitchell's shoulders were one inch less strong, less able to bear up under the weight. So he's back to answering to someone else again just like he swore he wouldn't do, breaking the promise he'd promised (himself more than anyone; those are the promises that are always first on the chopping block and the ones it hurts the most to dispose of) and goodnight, sweet ladies, goodnight, goodnight: the next ninety-six hours are going to tell him whether he's got a life to come back to or not, because he could take Mitchell away from his family but he couldn't cut Mitchell's family out from him, and he's not sure if Mitchell would go with him if he tried. 

(Lies. He knows Mitchell would. That's the worst part, because that means that if he stays, he won't even have the comforting fiction that he's only staying because he doesn't want to live without Mitchell again.)

The gravel crunches underneath the tires of the piece-of-shit the rental counter gave him as he pulls into the driveway. Trot out any old rag and bone and piece together a real live boy from the scraps and spaces, and he'd better hope nobody's home who's good enough to force a heart stuffed full with sawdust into his chest, because his only chance of getting through this is to start lying now and hope nobody can see how far his nose is growing.

Front seat of the car gets quiet as fuck as soon as he shuts off the engine. Mitchell doesn't look up, just works his way to the end of his knitting row, shoves the stitches further back on the needles, fishes the little rubber doohickey out of his pocket and jams it onto the tips to keep the stitches from sliding off and unraveling. (Pity they don't make them for _lives_. Or minds.) That accomplished, Mitchell looks up at him, for the first time in hours. (He's not counting.) 

Mitchell's eyes really are ridiculously blue. People call that color 'ocean', but people are fucking stupid: the ocean's mostly grey, or black, or navy. The only place the ocean is the color of Mitchell's eyes is in the tropics, and he's never been there to see it in person. (Is it live, or is it Memorex?)

Distracting himself again. Postponing the moment of truth (the day of reckoning) as long as he possibly can, because the longer he can go without hearing Mitchell say it (whatever 'it' will be), the longer he can pretend the shit hasn't hit the fan and the curious (stupid) little bitch hasn't opened the box, except the box must've been opened already, hasn't it; he's already down to holding nothing but hope left over.

Focus.

But Mitchell puts a hand on his wrist before he can open his mouth to say whatever stupid shit he can throw up as a smokescreen, and then it's once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. ( _Dishonor not your mothers; now attest that those whom you call'd fathers did beget you_. He'd swear that Mitchell's worth his breeding; there's been noble luster in his eyes since the start.) 

"Hey," Mitchell says. He stares out the windshield, not at Mitchell's face; if he doesn't look at Mitchell he won't have to admit what he sees there. "You say the word, we're out of here. No questions asked. No recriminations. This is your call, and you need to promise me you'll make it if you need to."

Bitch of it is, he's pretty sure Mitchell means it. He could put the car in reverse right now, peel out of this driveway in a spray of gravel and a gut-shot of busted hopes and Mitchell wouldn't say shit about his choices, except maybe to repeat that everything was tickety-boo. They could hole up in a B &B in Asheville for the four days until their flight back. Maybe talk things over. Maybe have that time he's been longing for since he first set foot back in the People's Republic of Austin, back to their house and their life and their hours of staring at each other and _not saying anything_ , the time to sit down and haul all of the shit out of the dark places and actually _figure out how to fucking fix this_. 

The first day of his return hadn't been anything close to enough confession. And Keller- _roshi_ 's spent hours and days over the months and years reminding him that he might've been raised Catholic but that was a long time ago and his new faith doesn't practice the confessional as any method leading to salvation (self-realization is another thing entirely) but there's still a part of him buried deep, the little boy who still can feel the sting of Sister Mary Michael's ruler on the back of his knuckles, who wants the closure of the _sacrosanctum concilium_ , because confession leads to absolution and he could use a hell of a lot of absolution right about now. Mitchell listened and Mitchell said he understood, but they've spent the past week not talking about it (for every possible value of 'it') and he can't decide whether to be pathetically grateful that Mitchell's giving him the time and space to fucking deal with his shit or worried that Mitchell doesn't give enough of a shit to push it. (Unfair to Mitchell. But the bastard ape in the back of his brain won't listen to reason. Never has.)

He's saved (again) from having to make some kind of answer (having to decide, do we stay or do we go) by the whine from the backseat, another county heard from, the Mouth weighing in. And that's another thing to worry about on this jaunty little journey, because he isn't naive and he isn't stupid: what looks like a legitimate and logical proposition when it's dear old Uncle Cam taking care of his infant nephew for a few months out of the kindness of his heart and his need to tend to _someone_ is another thing entirely when dear old Uncle Cam's teenage lover has come back from his slew of youthful indiscretions and then they were three, and he has no idea what he's going to do if the family repossesses the kid and they can't convince _materfamilias_ and _solidarii_ to let their merrie little family depart as whole as they came. 

Fuck, don't borrow trouble before it's hatched. Onward: God for England, Harry, and King George. The best way out is through. (And all the ghosts of dead white men who've been haunting his head can just _piss right off_ already; he's haunted enow for a' that.)

So he turns away and opens the car door before he can throw himself on Mitchell's mercy ( _anywhere but here, anything but this_ ) and then it's riverrun past Eve and Adam's from swerve of shore to bend of bay, or at least from seat of car to back of baby-seat, and he can tell as he picks the kid up that there's been some extra commodious vicus of recirculation in Howth Castle and environs and it's a good thing they left the baby-bag in easy reach. AJ cuts loose with the change-me-now howl, a piercing ululation bewailing the indignity of being left to stew in his own shit, and hey: he can sympathize with the kid. He sort of misses the days when his problems could be solved with a fresh diaper. 

He lays the kid out on the backseat with their spare towel tossed down to protect the fine Corinthian leather (it isn't that he cares about the condition of the rental, but it's July in North Carolina and they're parked in full sun; an accident would render the car as uninhabitable as a weapon of mass destruction), and by the time he's finished wiping and powdering, Mitchell's gotten himself and their chattels out of the trunk. 

Their arrival has not gone unheralded by the passel of heathens running o'er glorious hill and dale: the drums have been beaten, and their indigenous bearers have melted out of the jungle. Jessie, coltish and gawky the last time he'd seen her, has undergone her final transformation, emerging from her chrysalis as a beautiful butterfly. Or at least as a young woman: she appears to have discovered lipstick, and she's pulled up her hair in some kind of complicated twist that gets it off her neck _and_ makes her look like a by-God girl instead of an unformed creature who hadn't made a decision about whether she wanted to be a boy or a girl yet. (God. Seven months is a lifetime; you blink and they're all grown up.) 

And the other one who's been dispatched from the mothership makes his heart skip a beat before reason reasserts. Because Spencer and Skipper Griffith look nothing alike once you've seen one of them with his eyes melting and his face flensed down to bone, once you've spent twenty-three days with one of them your only link back to the human race, once you've spent too many stolen heartbeats trying to verify one of them wasn't losing what was left of his mind _during_ and picking up the pieces _after_. And he's not going to make the mistake of telling them -- either one of them -- how far behind the curtain he's managed to see, because the kids are good and the kids are solid, the kind of men who're going to be the backbone of the SGC for years and decades to come, and that only makes it more important for him to let the kids keep their comfortable lies, their shared pranks and jests, for as long as they can. 

If that means letting them think he can't see through them like a windowpane, he'll do it. (He's done worse for longer to let the men and women under his command keep as much of their innocent self-delusions as possible for as long as they can, because it's the harmless little lies you tell yourself that get you out of bed in the morning.) But he doesn't have to pretend this time, because when you catch one of them out of the corner of your eye it's easy to mistake him for the other, until you take that second look and can see the light-years and galaxies in his face. 

He hadn't known Skipper was home from Atlantis. He wonders if Mitchell had, and had just forgotten to convey the information. He wonders if someone called Griffith home to tend to his twin brother. He wonders if Spencer's doing badly enough that he needed the extra assist. He wonders if anyone would have told him if Spencer were.

He doesn't even need to look to know that Sassy Mitchell's standing on the porch, her back tall and strong, one hand curled thoughtlessly around the edge of the railing. Staring at them. Waiting. Seven months since the family woke up one morning to find he's crept away on cat feet, and once upon a time he promised Sassy none of this shit would splatter back on her family. It hadn't been a lie at the time so much as a _wish_ , fierce and adamant, defiant dare thrown into the jaws of the universe: _you can't have them too_. But wishes, horses, and he's spent his lives knowing that beggars don't ride, so he straightens his shoulders and firms up his spine and gets ready to face the band and pay the piper. ( _Nos morituri te salutamus_!)

Smile for the cameras.

Mitchell's already strapping himself into the baby-sling, reaching for the Mouth, and he can't grab for the kid without looking like he's reaching for a hostage to fortune. (Which he would be, and they all know it, which is why Mitchell won't let him. Fucker.) Jessie holds out a hand to him. "Keys," she says, when he gives her his very best look of what-the-fuck. "We're parking everybody over under the willows this weekend. I'll move the car for you; you've been traveling all day, the last thing you need is to sit back down now."

"If you wreck the rental, you're paying the security deposit," Griffith says. His voice is warm, his face affectionate, as he looks at his cousin. The look slides straight off when Griffith transfers his focus. The look _he_ gets isn't quite enough to blister paint, but it's only about three steps shy. "Nielson," Griffith adds, with a nod. 

"Griffith," he says right back. It's as friendly a greeting as he was expecting from any of them. Maybe a little friendlier; it's hard to gauge. He makes himself not analyze Griffith's tone further, not wonder if he can hear any hint of falseness in nomenclature that might prove Skipper has learned what he never wanted Spencer to know. ( _You know he has._ They aren't the same person, but what one twin knows the other does too, by osmosis if nothing more, and he's never liked the saying that three can keep a secret when two of them are dead, but he's lived his life knowing the truth of the proposition. The life-span of O'Neill's secret -- of _his_ secret, his giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name -- may already have expired. If it hasn't yet, it will. All he can hope is that if it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all, and he ain't ready for shit these days.) 

He passes the keys over to Jessie. Looks back at Skipper. Wonders, for half a minute, why the cloak-and-dagger routine with the cars and the parking; he's been here before when they overflowed the driveway, needed to resort to alternate parking methods, but 'under the willows' really means 'around back of the house', where the cars won't be visible from the road, and usually they just line people up on the front lawn. (Sassy says the crabgrass needs taming. There isn't a blade of crabgrass anywhere on the whole dozen acres.) 

Plenty of innocent reasons why they might've decided to move the parking lot around. Plenty of not-so-innocent reasons, too. Might be the whole house is still on high alert from the stress and strain of having a two-star general show up on their doorstep to question them about the actions of their least-fortunate son. Might be something along the way has tripped a few connections in the mind of one of the old warhorses put out to pasture in the den or the young Turks come home to roost, putting them all on high sentry and grand alert, making them quietly circle the wagons and close the ranks and decree it's nobody's fucking business who's visiting the clanstead. Might be they're looking for an excuse to kill him and hide the body and dump the car in the creek. He can't know.

"I'll take your bags," Griffith says, and oh, there isn't an inch of give in that stone facade, but at least there isn't an inch of warning in there either: just the cold Southern politeness of an officer and a fucking gentleman sent to ease the welcome of the guests, and it burns his ass on Mitchell's behalf, because Mitchell shouldn't be a guest in this fucking house. "Aunt Sassy has you in the peach bedroom again. Uncle Cam, she put the crib in there for you already, but she said to tell you that if it's not close enough to the bathroom, since you have the Mouth with you, you can move."

"We'll be fine," Mitchell says. Quiet as churchmice, standing in the driveway of his ancestral manse like a supplicant to the feast, one hand leaning on the cane he can't walk without anymore (the degeneration plainly visible in the seven months he was gone, or maybe his memory rewrote itself until he remembered Mitchell less crippled than he is and he doesn't want to think that of himself but he knows it's possible anyway) and the other one sheltering the back of AJ's head, fuzzy baby skull nestled underneath his palm. "Now piss off and let us get in the house without killing someone."

The words rise to his lips -- _yeah, we save that until after tea and crumpets_ \-- but he bites them back. Mitchell would laugh, but Mitchell would be the only one, and they aren't _en famille_ anymore. Or rather, they are, and that's the problem. 

Griffith's mouth firms ( _I know what you're trying to do, and I don't want any piece of it_ ); he steps back. "Spence is down by the creek," he offers, as a parting shot, eyes flinty. "I'll go tell him you're here."

Great. He knew he wasn't going to have any friends on this particular jaunt, but a lack of active hostility would've been nicer; he's already lived through one Cold War, could survive another pretty well, but somehow he's got the sense that war's already been declared and he just isn't getting his memos again. Still, he's glad to hear that Spencer's present. Mitchell's told him Spencer has been in DC for the six weeks since TIRESIAS/CYLLENE went down, on loan to O'Neill at the Pentagon for cleanup duty, but Mitchell hasn't told him anything about how well Spencer's bearing up under the weight of memory and he hasn't asked. He's worried, though. What Spencer went through is more than enough to break lesser men, and he can't trust (not anymore) that O'Neill will be able to fix it.

Deal with that when you get there.

Griffith picks up their suitcases and lopes off, around the back of the house, and Mitchell gives him a look, the kind of look that says _this too shall pass_. "I mean it on the leaving thing," Mitchell says, and the bitch of it is, he knows Mitchell's not lying. No, more than just 'not lying': Mitchell is telling him the truth without reservation and without second thoughts, whole and entire, no hidden agenda lurking behind his words, no _if you really loved me you'd_. 

It's one of the things he loves most about the man; isn't a duplicitous bone in that body, never has been, and that's just another lurking, lingering thorn in the garden of delight, because for all his truth he's been lying to Mitchell since the first minute they met. (Truth is a slippery proposition. There are sins of commission and sins of omission, but lies are lies no matter how you tell them or don't, and the last five years of his life might have been about stripping away everything but the truth but the habit of a lifetime -- of _two_ lifetimes -- is hard to break and anyway he's still not sure there's anything underneath his web of falsehoods.)

God, he's fucking bitter today. Enough. Hell calls hell; Mitchell would say that troubles breed on their own and don't need watering. They'll get through this. He can survive anything for four days.

"They're your family," he says. Knows Mitchell will hear it not as _they're your family; I wash my hands of them_ but as how he intended, _they're your family and I'm not going to get in the way of your relationship with them_ , because for all that he knows he and Mitchell are in it for the long haul, he also knows that if they don't make it, Mitchell will need the safety net to return to. He can't accept the burden of being the one Mitchell gave up his family for. He's carrying enough weight already.

Mitchell's eyes skewer him. "And you're setting yourself up as the martyr again, and I've been letting you get away with that shit because you're raw enough to be bleeding and I'm not that cruel. Fair warning: that shit won't fly past your deadline, and I'm not sure when exactly that deadline is. Maybe when I get sick and tired of listening to you trying to convince me that you're the source of all evil that ever existed. News flash, Nielson. You did some shit things. You made some hard choices. You got fucked over more than you did the fucking, and you're _still_ trying to take the weight of the world on your own shoulders instead of sharing it out like you should. And, you know, they got a word for that. Arrogance." 

He's gaping. He knows he is. Mitchell doesn't pull his punches, and that's another thing he loves about the man -- insists on hauling things out into the light of day, blowing away the smoke and shadows -- but there's a part of him whimpering _why now, why this_. Can't catch a fucking break, can't have five fucking minutes of silence inside his head, can't have an hour go by when he's not reminded of all the work he still has to do and all the effort he still needs to apply, to spread out the insides of his head on the workbench and tinker until things come together neatly, to be able to state with conviction that he's done all he can do. 

But the unexamined life is not worth living, and Mitchell's lips have that tiny twist to them heralding a yelling match of epic proportion -- the foundation of the house they're building, he's often thought, is their mutual willingness to _call each other on their shit_ \-- and now is not the fucking time. He closes his eyes for half a second, deep breaths (count four, hold, exhale) keeping him from blowing his lid, and files the accusation away for later. It stung enough to tell him that Mitchell's on to something. Mitchell usually is. 

Too bad the timing sucks.

"Yeah," he says, and when he opens his eyes Mitchell's watching him, and in the shorthand of their lives that response and this body language says _not now, not here_. (Mitchell can read him flawlessly by now; there's only been one other person in his life who could even approach the skill.) "Yeah. Okay."

Mitchell studies him for that extra second, divining his sincerity by the clues written across his face only Mitchell's ever learned to read, and finally nods. "So. You never did make the promise I asked you to. Promise me that if you need to, you say the word, and we'll bail."

He's not going to get out of this without saying the words -- without giving Mitchell the comfort of knowing Mitchell won't need to spend time and energy watching him like a hawk in order to be able to make the call of when to shut it down, without absolving Mitchell of the need to guard the hearts and minds of both of them instead of just Mitchell himself -- and he's only lucky that the promise Mitchell's demanding of him is something so nebulous as to be easily rewritten inside his head, turned into something he can swear to without knowing at the time he's already forsworn. Plenty of wiggle room in that one. 

And he's realized before now just how much all of this is weighing on Mitchell too -- arrogance is one thing, but _thoughtlessness_ is another, and Mitchell deserves more than a partner who's got his head so far up his own ass he can see the sun shine when he opens his mouth -- but this just drives it home; Mitchell's worried about him and Mitchell's worried about his family, and Mitchell's worried about how the family will react to _him_ , to them, and the last thing Mitchell needs right now is to have to spend the next four days waiting for the other shoe to drop and having to guard them _both_.

Running all the implications in his head is second nature to him by now; he's been doing it for the last six months and more, if not p then not fucking q, and it only takes him heartbeats to decide how he's going to play this. He can't leave Mitchell hanging, can't add this weight to the weight Mitchell's already carrying; Mitchell's pretty good at dealing with the _crazy man_ but that doesn't mean Mitchell wants to. (Love will take you a long way, but there's a point where love flares into resentment and he's out of practice reading Mitchell these days; he doesn't know how close Mitchell is to that line.) So he nods. "Yeah," he says. "I promise."

Mitchell looks at him and sighs, and he knows in that instant he isn't fooling anybody. They're heading inexorably towards the fight they've been postponing by mutual assent for so long he's had it a dozen times inside his head already, but standing on the gravel of Mitchell's family's driveway is no place to start it for good. "Liar," Mitchell says, but it's not an accusation; it's just weariness. "Come on, Mouth. One more unto the breech, dear friends, once more." 

It's always eerie when Mitchell says something out loud that he was thinking to himself a few minutes earlier. He's been accused of practical telepathy more times than he can count in his life (he and Daniel had gotten mindreading down to a fine art, able to pack entire wars into nothing more than each other's names, and thinking of Daniel again _here_ , with Mitchell's back, strong and steady, retreating from him and up the path to the house, feels like a sharper betrayal than anything he's ever done) and given the shit he's seen in his life it might almost be plausible.

He busies himself with fetching the last few chattels out of the trunk, festooning himself with carryon and diaper bag and laptop case before following after Mitchell, postponing the moment of reckoning as long as he can. When he hits the porch, Mitchell's folded up in Sassy's arms, his head on her shoulder even though she's a hand and a half shorter than he is like all he really wants is to curl up in her lap like a child again. Startles him, seeing it. He knows Mitchell left Black Mountain in a (only partly simulated) huff over the family's response to their cover, knows Mitchell's been ducking his mother's calls ever since Thursday last when the endless waiting ended not with a bang. Hadn't expected Mitchell to react like this, like a little boy who brings his hurts to Momma for Momma to kiss them better. Makes something twist inside his gut, seeing the need on Mitchell's face, knowing he put it there. 

He stands there for a minute, hand clutching the strap of his laptop case, wondering whether he should ease his way around them both and give them worlds enough and time. He's seen Mitchell at his best and Mitchell at his worst, but seeing _this_ \-- the look on Mitchell's face, the naked unmediated _emotion_ of it -- makes him want to turn his own face away, give Mitchell his privacy. And he can't decide if that impulse is born from not wanting to give Mitchell something to be embarrassed about later (except Mitchell's never embarrassed by strong emotion, never has been, never will be) or whether he's ashamed about witnessing it, ashamed at how badly he's hurt Mitchell and how badly he's still hurting him. 

But just as he's about to do so -- he doesn't belong in that moment, the first moment of unalloyed comfort Mitchell's been able to take in God knows how long, the waiting over, the prodigal returned, all that's left is to clean up the pieces, and who knows whether his presence is the sand in the oyster keeping Mitchell from relaxing into it -- Sassy picks her head up and pins a look at him over Mitchell's shoulder, and that roots his feet to the porch's wood as fast as though he'd been nailed there. 

She doesn't let go of Mitchell, just eases back a little, giving the Mouth a bit more room. "JD," she says to him, straight over Mitchell's shoulder. He can't read a fucking thing in her voice. 

His hands are sweating. Almost amuses him when he realizes it, through the hypnagogic lens of his eternal depersonalization (this has always been someone else's body, right from the very start). "Ma'am," he says, chin up, spine straight, Childe Roland in a handful of dust. He's faced down senators and generals and presidents, dictators and snakes and hothouse gods. He can handle Mitchell's mother.

( _Breathe._ )

She lets Mitchell go, then, stepping to stand in front of him instead, and if Jessie's grown up then Sassy's grown _old_ , wise, the lines of all her trials (Lord) grooved in her face, topographic map of tragedy and triumph alike. In that moment, facing her, he thinks he understands Mitchell's impulse to put it all in his momma's hands. Her scrutiny is swift, uncompromising, and just as he's starting to be glad Mitchell browbeat that promise out of him, she nods, once, and opens her arms. "Come here, then," she says. 

He goes.

She smells like bread and chocolate and baby powder and she holds him so fiercely he wonders if she's bracing herself against his pulling away. He holds himself still for half a second, fighting that very impulse (get away, get _free_ ) as hard as he can; it would show her too much for him to do it, and so he will endure. Then his shoulders relax without him telling them to, his head dropping down to rest against her strength the same way Mitchell's had not a minute before, and he can feel her huffed-out breath against the side of his head. 

"Hmpf. Thought so," she says, impersonal affect with no triumph or satisfaction, but her hands are soft and strong and warm, moving up (unbidden, he thinks; instinctive) to tug the elastic free so she can stroke his hair. (It is 1956 and he is sitting in his mother's lap, arms wrapped around her, crying out his skinned knees while across the world men are killing each other in a country he will someday kill men in.) 

His throat is tight. He'd armored himself against everything but compassion.

It's a long full minute before Sassy pulls back, and when she does it's only to take him by the shoulders and hold. "Leave your things," she says: firm, implacable. "We have a few things to talk about. Cameron, you take AJ and the bags inside; you're in the peach bedroom again. JD and I will be along eventually."

Mitchell gives him a helpless look. _I'm sorry_ , it seems to say; _I should have known, I should have anticipated_ and it's nothing more than habit that has him giving Mitchell the thin-lipped _it's okay_ smile, because if Sassy doesn't even want him in the house before taking the chance to read him the riot act things are worse than he'd thought. "Go easy on him, Momma," Mitchell says. "It's not his fault."

Sassy doesn't spare Mitchell a glance. She's too busy watching him, her eyes (so much like Mitchell's) unwavering in her study. "I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you," she says. "I told you to go inside, Cameron Everett. You get."

Mitchell gets.

He endures Sassy's scrutiny with his jaw set, ready to accept whatever penance she decrees (part of him hoping for it, for the chance to _atone_ ), waiting for her to start in. Waiting for her to draw the battle lines and give him the hints of what Augean stables he'll have to muck in order to win his way back into something approaching good graces. But she only waits, staring back at him as implacably as he's staring at her, and it takes him longer than he'd care to admit to realize she's waiting for him to comply with her orders (and orders they were) to leave his things on the porch. He can actually feel his cheeks heating as he turns away and stacks their bags (laptop cases and diaper bag and miscellaneous-shit airplane carryon; sometimes he feels like a Christmas tree bedecked for the holidays) into a neat pile next to the porch swing.

Sassy nods once he's done, as regal as a queen. "Walk with me," she says. It isn't an invitation.

The access ramp clangs and clatters beneath his heels as he falls into step at Sassy's side. He keeps his head down, watching his toes, Sassy's heels, instead of anywhere else: _keep your head down and your nose clean_ , his sergeant used to tell him before signing his pass for liberty, back in the days he's not supposed to remember, and that's the kind of advice that applies in jungles other than the jungle it was given in. He's expecting Sassy to start in on him the minute they're out of earshot of the house itself, but she doesn't. Their afternoon constitutional is almost pleasant, instead: she takes him around the edge of the house and through the grass, and he lets curiosity override common sense and lifts his eyes from his feet to turn his head and look down towards the creek as soon as they get in range.

There's a figure, wrapped in hooded sweatshirt and sitting cross-legged and hunched over, alone at the edge of the rickety jumble of wood they call a dock out of courtesy even though the water's no more than waist-deep and wouldn't be able to hold a boat even after a rainstorm of Biblical proportion. He doesn't need to be told who it is. He's itching to go down there and see whether Griffith's all right -- or, no: he knows Griffith's not all right; he wants to go and see how badly Griffith's not-alrightness is taking form, see whether it's one of the manifestations he'll be able to help with or not. He can't, though. He has to get through Sassy first.

And his look must've given too much away, because as soon as he remembers -- drags his attention away from Griffith, back to his toes, shutting down his awareness as much as possible and reminding himself that he _cannot show any of them that he knows anything about what Griffith's going through_ \-- Sassy makes a noise next to him that's familiar, too familiar: it's the exact same noise Mitchell makes when a long-cherished suspicion has been confirmed, and the minute he hears it, he knows he's screwed the pooch. 

"You know, that's the oddest thing," Sassy says, straight in his ear, and he jams his hands into the pockets of his jeans and balls them into fists, thumbs folded under his fingers the way he knows he's not supposed to, feeling the joints cracking and popping beneath the pressure. _Focus_. "Three months on back, my brother got a phone call from Spencer's commander with some cock-and-bull story about how Spencer was in trouble for something he'd never in a world of Sundays do. And sure enough, six weeks ago Henry got a phone call from the President himself, thanking him for raising a son who knew the meaning of 'duty' and setting Henry's mind at ease, and a few days after that Spencer called us all up and apologized for putting us through that whole wringer. And a few days after _that_ , well, Skipper comes back from whatever out-of-the-way assignment he's been on for nearly the past year and doesn't say a word to any of us, just hotfoots it out to Spencer's side and hasn't left it since."

So. Skipper _was_ pulled home from Atlantis either to provide support for the cleanup on TIRESIAS/CYLLENE or to provide support for his brother; it wasn't a coincidence. Good to know. Good that Skipper's there, at least; it means Spencer won't be alone, or as alone as anyone in the Program is ever allowed to get. (He doesn't actually know the answer to that one anymore. When he was calling the shots, nobody who'd been through what Spencer's been through would've been allowed to roam free without having gotten counseling from _someone_ \-- and not one of the Program shrinks; how _anyone_ could think someone who'd never been through the Gate could counsel those who had, no matter _how_ many fancy pieces of paper they had hung on their walls, is still beyond him -- and he doesn't want to think O'Neill would've forgotten that cardinal rule, but it's been years and miles since he and O'Neill were the same man and he doesn't know what compromises O'Neill's learned to make in the name of expediency.)

And he can't say any of this to Sassy. Can't risk confirming anything more than the suspicions he's already accidentally let her see the answers to. She doesn't _look_ like she's looking at him, but she's been raising Mitchells for nigh on forty years; if she doesn't have eyes in the back of her head by now, it's only because she's mastered the art of using every available sense she has and not just relying on her sight, and he has absolutely no doubt she's watching him like a hawk for any more bits of the puzzle she's trying to piece together.

God, he hates this. So fucking much.

"Neither of them is saying a word," Sassy says next to him, quiet as churchmice, iron and steel threaded through every word. "But I've been raising them their whole lives when their daddy couldn't be there to wipe runny noses and kiss skinned knees, and I might know when my boys are lying to me, but I also know when they're leaving out whole chunks of the story. Which they are. And now, I'm used to that -- plenty of times one of my men has come home and let me know there are things he can't tell me -- except for one little detail I can't make fit. They aren't the only ones who're leaving things out as part of this story."

They've been walking the entire time Sassy's been explaining to him that his cover story's starting to stink more than week-old fish, and he risks a look up when Sassy comes to a halt to realize they're in front of the old orchard wall, left over from the days when the Mitchell land was a couple hundred acres bigger and a working farm still. These days, after years of selling off parcels during lean times and deeding pieces to adult children over the years, all that's left are a few outbuildings that used to house chickens, cows, and horses, an extra-large vegetable garden Sassy uses as punishment detail for the children old enough to be able to tell weeds from kitchen ingredients, and the orchard: a quarter-acre of trees, mostly peach and apple with some cherry mixed in, walled in with crumbling stonemasonry that was already old when Sassy was a girl and netted over to keep the birds at bay. A few shabby woven-reed baskets sit just outside the wooden gate; Sassy picks one up and props it against her hip with the ease of long practice.

"I'll thank you to open that gate," Sassy says, when he doesn't move. He starts a little, strides forward to comply. Around this woman, he always feels like he's two steps behind. "You aren't saying a word," Sassy adds, as she steps forward. Instead of looking at him, she's surveying the orchard, evaluating the trees with the weather eye of one who's done this hundreds of times already.

There are a hundred things he could say here. Most of them would end in disaster. Contrary to what Da -- to what some people have loudly maintained in the past, he actually _does_ think before he opens his mouth; if he didn't, he wouldn't have survived as long as he has. So he bites back most of the things that leap to mind. "Didn't know I needed to, ma'am."

"Hmpf." Sassy thrusts the basket at him; his arms come up to circle it automatically as it hits his chest, and she turns her back to him and gathers up her apron in one hand, making a pocket out of it. "Seems to me there's been a lot of things you should've been saying all along you haven't been; I'm not surprised the leopard isn't changing its spots now."

He can feel slivers peeling back from the warp and weft of the basket; one of them is trying to worm its way underneath his thumbnail. Trying to keep it from stabbing him is enough of a distraction to keep him from blurting out things he really shouldn't, so he concentrates only on what he can feel: the texture of the reeds beneath his fingertips, the July sunlight on the top of his head, the rock he's half-standing on. If he concentrates on those, maybe he can get through this without fucking everything beyond repair.

He's been doing his very best to project 'sullen teenager' with every scrap of his being, hoping to tap into the generations of experience Sassy has with reactions of that ilk, hoping to channel her suspicion into a familiar script. He'd thought it was about even odds of it working, but he'd forgotten one thing: Sassy Mitchell's smarter than anyone gives her credit for, and he's been fucking up his cover story in tiny subtle ways since moment one. Some deliberate, to give Mitchell's family something different to worry about. Some accidental, because despite years of study he's _still_ not confident of his ability to back up his appearance with the right body language, the right slang and attitudes and subconscious cues. Sassy's just better at reading them than most people would be. Mitchell had to have learned it somewhere.

"You've been lying to us since the moment you walked into our lives," Sassy says, and the only thing that makes it bearable is the way she isn't looking at him: she's studying the branches of the nearest tree, selecting the ripest fruits and piling them into her apron, apple by apple. "And I'd've protested more, except it was clear to anybody with eyes to look that Cameron knew the whole truth. A body'd have to be blind not to notice that you think the sun rises and sets in my boy's eyes, and it's pretty clear he feels the same way. Now, Everett thinks you've got something nefarious in mind -- that you've been lying to us because you want something, or because you're setting something up for the future --"

He's known for months -- years -- that Everett Mitchell thinks he's at best a gold digger and at worst a deliberate predator, but to hear it out loud like that, delivered in Sassy's dry recitation, _hurts_. Hurts in places he didn't realize were still vulnerable. "No, God no," he says, before he realizes he's speaking, before he can bite his tongue and remind himself that he's promised he'll be silent and still for this delightful little chat. 

Sassy tosses a look over her shoulder. "Hush. I'm not finished. And don't you let me hear you take the Lord's name in vain again."

It's been years since someone was able to make him feel that much like a little boy again, and he fights the urge to drop his chin and toe at the dirt. (Thinks of his mother, God rest her, and wonders how he could ever explain that she'd been halfway to adulthood when Sassy had been nothing more than a glimmer in her mother's eye, and _God_ this is making his head hurt, just keeping his stories straight.) He closes his eyes. This sure as _fuck_ sounds like the leadup to an incident he _doesn't fucking need right now_ , but he's already tried making his protest and Sassy's already let him know that little boys should be seen and not heard, so he doesn't want to risk trying it again.

He can feel Sassy's eyes hot on his forehead as he trains his eyes on the bottom of the basket, makes himself trace the ins and outs of the reeds overlapping each other, makes himself concentrate on the smudges of dirt and grime consequent of years of use. Easier than looking up. Easier than having to look as well as listen, and yeah, part of it is magical thinking (if he can't see her, she can't see him _fucking up his fucking cover_ , again, still) and part of it is just that he's _tired of this shit_. (So easy to walk away. It would've been so easy not to come back in the first place. But he wove this hairshirt and he'll by God wear it, and if he'd let Mitchell postpone _der Tag_ the way Mitchell had wanted to, it only would've grown like a cancer between them.)

Satisfied that he isn't going to interrupt again, Sassy turns back to her task; the pile of apples in her apron builds higher and higher. "A body'd also have to be a fool not to notice that you're hurting, fit enough to die from," she continues. It's so unexpected it takes a minute for her words to penetrate the miasma of pain he's been living with for weeks now. (Months. Too long.) "And I'd like to think that you and my boy know better than to think that I'm a fool, but if there's one thing I know from forty years of raising this family's men, it's that they always forget a mother can tell when her children are in pain. When I told you we were coming out here, you thought I was bringing you out here to tell you that you weren't welcome in my house anymore."

It's a flat statement, uninflected, and his head snaps up and his mouth is half-open before he remembers her slapping him down the _last_ time he tried to interrupt. He sinks his teeth into his lower lip just in time to keep him from saying something. Good thing, really; he has no idea what that something might've been. Her eyes are gimlets; they drive straight through him. He gets the uncomfortable sense she can tell what he was about to say even though he stopped himself. (He wishes she would tell him.)

"You bring that basket on over," she says, before she says anything else, and there's something in her voice that the very best sergeants he's known over the years would kill to have access to, because his feet are moving before he tells them to obey.

One by one, she transfers the apples from her apron to the basket he's holding. She does it entirely by experience and peripheral vision; her eyes are too busy flaying him. "And I'll overlook the insult," she says, calm and collected, as he tries to remember how to breathe. "Because even if Cameron hadn't told me you didn't have any family worth the name, I'd've known it by the way you act like a horse that's been whipped more than it's been ridden, always shying away when someone reaches out a hand to you. Isn't your fault you don't know how family works around here. There isn't a whole lot that'd make me say those words. And what's been going on with you and Cameron, and Spencer, and Skipper, for the last year -- that isn't it."

He can't tear his eyes away from hers. Not until she's ready for him to look away. Which she isn't. Not yet. Too much to hope that she hadn't pieced together their shit with the twins'. Sassy Mitchell is a smart woman, but more than that, she's an _observant_ one, and there have been too many things tied together to pass them off as coincidence. He wouldn't have believed it, if he were her. And Sassy is smarter about people than he is.

"You looked at Spencer, back there, the way a man looks at someone he's responsible for," Sassy says. "You looked at him like a man seeing someone he's protecting."

If he didn't have this bushel of apples in his arms, his hands would be shaking so badly Sassy wouldn't be able to miss it. His eyes are closed. He doesn't remember closing them. "Please," he hears himself saying. Even after five years, his voice sounds _wrong_ in his own ears: as wrong as his face in the mirror, as wrong as his hands when he looks down at them, as wrong as the skin he's had to shape and pierce and mark in order to feel it even slightly his own. "Please don't."

"You have been lying to me since the moment you entered my house," Sassy says: each word neat, precise, unrelenting like glaciers sweeping over the plain. "And every time you lie to me, you carve off another piece of your soul and burn it away, because you hate lying like the preacher hates sin and Bayliss hates taxes, and any idiot can see that. I brought you out here where there's nobody to hear but God and me to tell you that it is time to stop lying and start telling me the truth."

His blood is singing in his ears, and all he can think is how wrong she is. He's been lying, professionally and recreationally, for almost as long as her son's been alive. He has a hundred different pieces of story he can tell. Once upon a time, he would've been able to spin from airy nothing a local habitation and a name, give her truth that sounded fictional and fiction more real than any truth, but once upon a time is always twice as long ago as he tries not to remember it being and his well of lies is long dried up. 

"I can't," he says. (Even that's too much. He's used to holding the kind of secrets where you can't even admit there's a secret to hold.) He opens his eyes again. The orchard's swimming; he mistakes it for heat-shimmer, until he blinks and it wavers, clears, re-fills. Been years since he cried, and now it's twice in two weeks. Another sin to lay at the snake's feet, and he thinks of the snake and realizes where they are, looks down at the basket of apples in his arms, and for a single shining instant the urge to laugh and the need to scream are pitted perfectly against each other, here in the east of Eden. 

It passes quickly. Leaves his knees unsteady. He sits down before he _falls_ down, sets the basket in front of him, draws his legs up ( _kekka fuza_ , and he knows Sassy's watching -- she doesn't miss much -- but he can't _not_ , not right now; let it be another unexplained data point in a lifetime full of them.) 

Oh, God, he is _so sick of himself_.

There's a sound next to him, and it takes a minute before the last working bit of his brain catches up to his ears and identifies it as a deep and shifting sigh. "Oh, my boy," Sassy says. The last few apples she'd been holding in her apron go tumbling over the grass as she kneels down next to him, and when she pulls him close against her chest, gathers him up into something that's half hug and half anchor, it's too much of a shock for him to twist away immediately and too much of a comfort for him to want to pull away once it sinks in. "My poor boy," she says against his hair, and his knee is twisted wrong and there's too much pressure on his hip and he _doesn't give a flying fuck_.

Breathe.

Eventually he realizes Sassy's wiping his cheeks with her apron. He breathes in again, as deeply as he can without feeling the churning, gut-twisting emptiness in his stomach knocking against his ribs, and lets that breath out. "Sorry," he says. Breathes in again. "I --" 

There is absolutely nothing he can say that could possibly salvage this situation. There wasn't anything he could say to salvage this situation even before he got himself into it, but now it's becoming clearer and clearer. He has three choices. He can tell Sassy that he can't tell her anything, which will do nothing but make her even more determined to pry answers out of _someone_. He can stand up right now and walk out of their lives forever, take Mitchell with him and break the back of Mitchell's relationship with his family for the rest of Mitchell's life. Or he can tell Sassy the truth. None of them are good options.

"Don't you apologize to me," Sassy says. "Don't you dare insult me by apologizing to me." She takes a deep breath of her own, shifting and shimmering like a desert-sand mirage, and lets it out so slowly he gets sympathetic spots across the backs of his eyes just by listening to it. "My poor boy. You've been on your own so long you plain old don't know what to do with any of us, haven't you."

Strangely enough, the first thing that comes to mind is an old fairy-tale Daniel told him. Told them all, around the fire one night on a world so far away he couldn't even find its sun in the sky with a telescope, and it had been one of the few rare peaceful missions and they'd told Hammond that Daniel and Carter needed more time to finish gathering their data when really all they'd wanted was an extra two nights of vacation. He can still remember the way Daniel had leaned forward so far Teal'c had automatically shot out an arm to keep him from falling into the fire, the way it had made Carter giggle, the way Daniel had been forced to pause his story for them to explain the meaning of the phrase "Mom brake", and then Daniel had gone back to telling the story about the Frog Prince, Iron Henry, the bands around the servant's heart cracking and springing free. It's amazing what your mind tells you at times like these. It's amazing what you can remember of the old life, after you've tried to start a new one.

He rests his head against the side of her shoulder. Takes another deep breath, feeling the flutter of his heartbeat in his chest and in the pulse against his throat, and imagines he can hear the cracking in his own chest as he lets it out. _Let it go._

"I've done everything I possibly can to keep your family out of all of this," he says. He's too tired to play any of his roles anymore; there's a part of him that wonders what Sassy must hear in his voice. "I've done everything I possibly can to keep you from realizing enough to even ask these questions. Not because I'm trying to take care of it all myself, although I wish I could. Because the whole story is so _fucking_ crazy that you'd want to lock me up if I told you the whole of it, and it's the kind of story where knowing only a piece would leave you with more questions, even if I just told you the pieces that could give you your answers."

Sassy's voice is just as calm, just as quiet, as his own. "And because all those pieces you haven't been telling me are so classified they'd lock me up for a century just for hearing them, and lock _you_ up for a millennium for telling them."

It isn't a question. He laughs tonelessly, just a little, just enough, and sits up. Rubs the heels of his hands over his cheekbones, hard, and it feels so good, teetering on the line between pleasure and pain, that he does it again. "You know, right now that's the least of my worries. Which should tell you something."

Sassy produces a kitchen towel from somewhere in the depths of her apron. Hands it over. He supposes it's a small mercy that she doesn't hold it against his nose and tell him to blow. He does anyway, his sinuses clogged and aching; Sassy reclaims the towel before he can shove it into his own pocket, makes it disappear again.

"Just tell me this," she says. "Tell me that you and Cameron and Spencer and Skipper are doing the right thing."

And he thinks of a man he had to kill for nothing more than to provide him with a _cover story_ , and he thinks of a handful of men whose only crime was knowing too much and wanting to know even more, and he thinks of the sound of Griffith snapping a man's neck while in the process of dying just slowly enough to have time to collect the honor guard to pave his way. The words turn to dust and sand in his mouth. "Mitchell --" he starts, but no, that's wrong too. 

It's all wrong. He thinks of all the years Sassy has stood in the kitchen of this house and waited for news of her beloved dead, thinks of all the white crosses with family names across their faces, thinks of Mitchell's brother and Mitchell's father and all the men and women in the house not five hundred yards away, drinking beer and playing poker and arguing about the barbecue. Thinks about Seattle, downtown _fucking_ Seattle, a city he'll never be able to make himself set foot in again, and about the way he keeps waking up in the middle of the night and expecting Mitchell's eyes to glow incandescent gold. Thinks about how Sassy would take yes for an answer, take that one tiny ember of comfort and nurse it into enough of a flame to warm her, and how she's been doing that for so long with so little it's a wonder her coals haven't crumbled into dust and blown away. 

Thinks about truth, and identity, and vows taken and vows broken and all the ways in which he's already damned.

He unfolds his feet. Draws his knees to his chest. Props his elbows on his knees, fisting his hands in his hair, dropping his face and pressing his cheekbones against the lines of his biceps where the borders of his personal lithography shade into nothingness. Next to him, Sassy is silent. It's a familiar silence; it's the same one Mitchell uses when waiting for him to figure out the inside of his head. The similarity is almost ghostly.

When he talks about his vows -- when Mitchell manages to pin him down enough to _make_ him talk about them, the few times Mitchell hasn't been willing to let him get away with a joke or a demurral or an answer that isn't an answer at all -- he usually shades his answers to make Mitchell think he means the vows Keller- _roshi_ heard from him at his investiture, the ones anyone with Google or Wikipedia or just a reasonably competent knowledge of comparative religion could piece together. And he means those too, even when he can't keep them, even when he's in the process of breaking them, but when he says _vows_ he means something else entirely. 

Five years ago -- over five years, he realizes; his unbirthday had passed with no band playing, no flags flying, while he'd been plotting the snake's downfall -- he'd stood on the side of a road just outside Pueblo at sunrise and had _the moment_ , the realization, the flash of insight that's defined him and shaped him and guided him and made this life _possible_ ; Jack O'Neill was a lifetime ago, someone else's story, and in that moment he'd been born from the ashes. And maybe his life will all turn out to have been purchased with faerie gold, crumbling back into old and broken leaves when the sunlight hits the piles of the coin he's bargained for his _self_ , but if it does, it won't be because he threw it all away.

So many of the things he's sworn contradict each other that he knows he'll never be able to uphold them all, and that's been the story of his life for as long as he can remember being conscious enough to pay it heed. The price he owns, that owns him: he must count himself forever forsworn, forced to uphold whichever of his truths is most urgent and pressing at the moment he makes the decision. Decide in haste, repent in leisure, and he's been living his life in a perpetual state of emergency for years, always one step away from the meltdown, waiting for his house of cards to come tumbling down with a huff and a puff and expose the hypocrisy of his foundations. 

Daniel once accused him of being a master of situational ethics, never giving the same answer twice, an exception for everything and a response always in its place. And it had stung at the time, because Daniel's world was always black and white, good and evil, no room for the nuances in between. His life has been lived in the pauses between absolute pronouncements, the spaces in between the bright lines, the moments for which there are no clear answers. He's been navigating those waters for as long as he can remember with nothing more than the lamp of his own conscience to cast light on their shoals. 

It hasn't gotten any easier over the years. If anything, it's gotten harder; the tools he's learned for hacking the inside of his own head have also forced him to strip away all his comfortable delusions, and now when he makes his choices, it's with full knowledge of all the things he's betraying.

An hour ago he'd been wishing he could tell Sassy the truth for Mitchell's sake, but now it's for her own. She's spent her entire adult life raising boys and girls to go forth and serve, building them up step by step, stuffing them full of as many scraps and pieces of right and true she could get her hands on in the hopes that somewhere in there would be the one weapon her children would need to wield in their personal confrontations between what's right and what's easy. And the nature of the beast means that she'll never be able to know how well she's forged, because the darkest nights of the soul her children come to face are the ones that can't be hauled out into the light, and she's spent her life having to triangulate by touch. Having to guess and hope and trust in her teaching to hold at the very worst moments. Having to trust that her children will do the right thing.

Having to ask someone she has no reason to believe for reassurance that she hasn't failed in her life's work.

Truth is all he has left. He's spent years now being the keeper of nothing more than his own conscience, and if these past months have taught him anything, they've taught him that the weight of another's is more than he can bear up under. Not again. He's spent so long justifying and rationalizing and trying to see through the years of lies he built for himself that he can't say anymore what's right, what's true. 

The last seven months -- his last mission; the last assignment he'll ever accept, save for the one he returned to, the cover identity he'll die upholding -- have pushed him to his limits, trying the shapes and outlines of his mettle, Seattle the cruicible that melted him down to nothing more than a goal, an ideal, an intention. And since his return he's spent hours on his knees, working through every decision he was forced to make from beginning to end, and he might have come to believe that each of them was the most right thing he could do at the time -- to serve others, to serve his self -- but what's _right_ isn't often easy, and right is different than good.

Nobody knows that better than he does. It's one lesson he learned long enough ago that he knows O'Neill shares it. Five years ago, he swore he would never again let someone else decide those questions for him. And the flip side of that vow is just as important, never again being the one to decide for someone else, and he'll break a lot of his vows for the people he loves, but he won't break that one.

Truth is the only thing he has left to give her, breaking one vow to uphold another -- story of his fucking _life_ \-- and he'll have to hope she sees it as the gift, the apology, that it truly is.

"If you ever repeat a word of this to anyone -- _anyone_ ," he finally says, to the fabric of his t-shirt, "they won't lock me up and throw away the key. They'll just shoot me instead. I'm not joking, and I'm not exaggerating. I'm also not crazy. Give me your word."

"I swear," she says. So quickly, without reservation, without hesitation, without pause to consider, and he can see _so much_ of Mitchell in his momma it makes his _heart hurt_. 

What the hell. From the things she's said, she's probably pieced together enough that nobody would believe he hasn't told her anyway.

"In 1928, on the Giza plateau," he starts -- Daniel's words, Daniel's echoes, _begin at the beginning and go all the way to the end, then stop_ , and every word is betrayal and redemption all at once.


End file.
